The influence of hearing impairment on the development of phonemic hearing

Abstract

Phonemic hearing signifies the auditory notion of phonemes, as well as its differentiation. Disturbance of phonemic hearing is characterized by difficulties in differentiating between spoken sounds and occurs in a large number of various pathologies that are in essence of organic or functional origin. In individuals with hearing impairment phonemic hearing is damaged in such a way that, depending on the level of hearing impairment depends whether the phonemic hearing is undeveloped, only for oppositional phonemes or for disjunctive as well. The aim of our research was to examine the influence of hearing impairment on the development of phonemic hearing in preschool aged children. The sample consisted of fifteen children, of both sexes, aged three to eight years, with bilateral hearing impairment, average intellectual ability and no additional impairments. All children were involved in re/habilitational surdological treatment. The children were evaluated using the Test for differentiating phonemes and the development of phonemic hearing by S. Vladisavljevic. The results show that the level of hearing impairment influences the ability to develop phonemic hearing; however of greater influence on this process are age and the length of re/habilitation. Furthermore, based on the results it can be concluded that hearing impaired children best phonemically differentiate vocals, than semi-vawles, fricatives and affricates the worst.

Fonemski sluh označava auditivnu predstavu o fonemi kao i njenu diferencijaciju. Poremećaj fonemskog sluha predstavlja otežano razlikovanje govornih zvukova i javlja se kod većeg broja različitih patologija koje su u osnovi organskog ili funkcionalnog porekla. Kod osoba oštećenog sluha fonemski sluh je oštećen tako, da u zavisnosti od stepena oštećenja sluha zavisi i to da li je nerazvijen fonemski sluh samo za opozicione foneme ili i za disjunktivne. Cilj istraživanja je bio da se ispita uticaj oštećenja sluha na razvoj fonemskog sluha kod dece predškolskog uzrasta. Uzorak je činilo petnaestoro dece, oba pola, uzrasta od 3 do 8 godina, sa obostranim oštećenjem sluha, prosečnih intelektualnih sposobnosti i bez dodatnih oštećenja. Sva deca su bila uključena u re/habilitacioni surdološki tretman. Deca su ispitivana Testom za razlikovanje fonema i razvoja fonemskog sluha, autora S. Vladisavljević. Rezultati pokazuju da stepen oštećenja sluha utiče na sposobnost formiranja fonemskog sluha, ali da je veći uticaj na ovaj proces ima uzrast i dužina re/habilitacije. Takođe, na osnovu rezultata može se zaključiti da deca oštećenog sluha najbolje fonemski razlikuju vokale, zatim poluvokale, frikative a najlošije afrikate.