Hearing aid wear time and its impact on vocabulary in preschoolers with moderately severe to profound hearing loss

Abstract

Objective

This study aimed to explore how the consistency of hearing aid (HA) use impacts vocabulary performance in children with moderately severe to profound hearing loss and determine the amount of HA use time associated with better vocabulary outcomes.

Design

Personal wear time percentage (WTP) was an indicator of HA use consistency, and the information on HA wear time was collected from both parent reports and datalogs. Pearson's correlations were performed to investigate the associations between hearing loss severity, WTP and vocabulary performance. Standard vocabulary scores among children below and above three WTP cutoff values (80%, 85%, and 90%) were examined to determine the WTP amount that yielded significantly better vocabulary outcomes.

Study sample

Forty-seven children aged 36–79 months and their caregivers.

Results

Both parent reports and datalogs WTP significantly correlated with vocabulary outcomes. Parent-reported WTP were found to be predictive of datalogs WTP. Apart from hearing thresholds, HA fitting age and maternal education level, datalogs WTP was a significant independent predictor of vocabulary performance. Children with ≥ 90% WTP were more likely to perform better on vocabulary tests than those with < 90% WTP.

Conclusion

The findings support the potential benefits of consistent HA use for vocabulary development.

Keywords:

• HA use consistency
• HA wear time
• vocabulary outcome
• children with hearing loss
• Chinese

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Correction

Disclosures statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Chidren’s Hearing Foundation [CHF-2020-030-B-005-a].