| The preschool years are a critical time frame for the emergence and acquisition of grammatical morphemes. The rate of a child’s morphological growth between three and five years of age directly impacts language proficiency. Due to reduced and/or delayed auditory access, many preschool children who are deaf or hard-of-hearing (DHH) exhibit a deficiency in morpheme production during oral communication and often lag behind their same-age hearing peers in morphological development. Understanding of the morphological abilities of preschool children who are DHH can guide speech-language pathologists’ clinical decision making, shape optimal developmental outcomes, and possibly prevent long term comprehensive services for this population in the future. The purpose of this study is to examine grammatical morphemes used in obligatory contexts for accuracy by preschool children who are DHH and the influence of intervention on accuracy over time.
Key Words: Deaf, Grammatical morphemes, Hard-of-hearing, Language sample, Preschool |