Differential language performance of Mandarin-speaking children with and without hearing loss

ABSTRACT

The current study investigated the differential item functioning (DIF) on language assessment between Mandarin-speaking children with and without hearing loss (HL). Particularly, it explored the differences between the children in specific linguistic aspects. A total of 253 Mandarin-speaking children, aged three to six years old, participated, including 140 children without HL and 113 with HL. All children took the Revised Preschooler Language Assessment (RPLA) to assess their language ability. The RPLA items were categorized into different linguistic aspects, including semantics, syntax and pragmatics. The DIF analysis was conducted and the results revealed several statistically significant DIF items favouring children with and without HL, showing both the advantages and difficulties faced by children with HL. Items that favoured children with HL included directional words (semantics), comparative sentences (syntax), analogies (semantics), producing complete sentences (pragmatics/syntax), and retelling stories (pragmatics). Items that favoured children without HL included wh-questions (semantics), sentences containing connectives (syntax), logical words (semantics), comprehension of long paragraphs (semantics), and identifying semantic features (semantics). The results shed light on the advantages, which may benefit children with HL due to early intervention. In addition, suggestions on the difficulties were also provided, which these children may encounter compared to their hearing counterparts.

KEYWORDS:

• Differential item functioning
• language performance
• hearing loss
• Mandarin-speaking children
• early intervention
• linguistic aspects

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 DE represents pre-nominal modification marker in Mandarin Chinese (Huang, Li, & Li, 2009).

2 BA is a grammatical marker denoting that the following object is being affected (Huang, Li, & Li, 2009).

Additional information

Funding

The authors reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.