The lexical development of children with hearing impairment and associated factors.

PURPOSE This study aimed at analyzing the association between the lexical development of children with hearing impairment and their psychosocial and socioeconomic characteristics and medical history. METHODS An analytic transversal study was conducted in an Auditive Health Attention Service. One hundred and ten children from 6 to 10 years old using hearing aids and presenting hearing loss that ranged from light to deep levels were evaluated. All children were subjected to oral, written language and auditory perception tests. Parents answered a structured questionnaire to collect data from their medical history and socioeconomic status, and questionnaires about the features of the family environment and psychosocial characteristics. Multivariate analysis was performed by logistic regression, being the initial model composed by variables with p<0,20 in the univariate analysis. In the final model, we adopted a significance level of 5%. RESULTS The final model of the multivariate analysis showed an association between the performance on the vocabulary test and the results of phonemic discrimination test (OR=0.81; 95%CI 0.73-0.89). CONCLUSION The results show the importance of stimulating the auditory processing, particularly the phonemic discrimination skill, throughout the rehabilitation process of children with hearing impairment. This stimulation can enhance lexical development and minimize the metalanguage and learning difficulties often observed in these children.