do bilaterally hearing-impaired children catch up?
Department of Phoniatrics/Pedaudiology, University G_ttingen, Goettingen, Germany. ckiese@med.uni-goettingen.deOBJECTIVE: To evaluate expressive vocabulary growth in hearing-impaired preschool children wearing hearing aids. DESIGN: Prospective analysis of the outcomes of children included in the 1994 German ‘Goettinger Hoer-Sprachregister’ (GHR) series, using a repeated-measures paradigm in six- to nine-month intervals (t1-t3). SUBJECTS: Twenty-seven children (aged 2.0-4.4 years) with bilateral sensorineural hearing loss (with averages at frequencies of 0.5, 1, 2 and 4 kHz of > 20 to > 90 dB in the better ear) from the 1994 GHR series. The children were diagnosed at a mean age of 31.4 months (standard deviation (SD) 10.6 months) and fitted with a binaural hearing aid at a mean age of 32.3 months (SD 10.5 months). Nonverbal intelligence was average (five missing data entries). Standardized, age-appropriate picture naming tests (the ‘Sprachentwicklungstest f_r 2-j_hrige Kinder’, the Kauf
