Fonologisk utveckling hos barn med otitbenägenhet : En longitudinell studie i åldrarna 3;6 – 5;6 år

Sammanfattning: Background: Hearing loss can act as a risk factor to poor linguistic development. One type of hearing loss is caused by fluid in the middle ear, a common consequence of acute otitis media (AOM). A number of children have ≥3 episodes of AOM within a 6-month period and are thus classifiedas otitis prones. Otitis proneness can result in fluctuation of the hearing experience that is believed to create inconsistency of the perceived speech signal and, thus, difficulties for the child to identify, categorize and produce speech sounds.Objective: The aims of the current study are to investigate, longitudinally the phonological development, concerning phonological production and phonological awareness, in children with otitis proneness and to compare their results with the results of the children without otitis proneness.Method: In total, 25 children with and 21 children without otitis proneness were involved in the study. Tests on phonological production (age 3;6 and 4;6) and phonological awareness (age 5;6) were performed onannual basis.Result: The comparisons between the study and the control group at the age 3;6, 4;6 and 5;6 years, reveal few significant results for either phonological production nor phonological development. For phonological production differences were seen at segmental level. The longitudinal development of phonological production indicate typical phonological development between age 3;6 and 4;6 for both test group and control group.Conclusion: Otitis proneness before 2;6 years of age does not appear to be an indicator of affected linguistic development at the ages 3;6 to 5;6 years, neither for phonological production nor concerning phonological awareness. However, there are great variations in the results, indicating that some children have greater difficulties than others do.