Spelling Errors in Children With Mild to Moderate Hearing Loss: Relations to Linguistic and Audiologic Factors

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the types of spelling errors made by children with mild to moderate hearing loss (CMMHL) compared with children with typical hearing (TH) and to determine if types of spelling errors were related to linguistic or audiologic factors. CMMHL and TH completed measures of spelling, spoken language, speech production, and reading. Children's spellings were coded for linguistic-based spelling errors using the Multilinguistic Coding System. The relation of types of linguistic spelling errors and children's performance on standardized language assessments, as well as audiologic factors, was evaluated. CMMHL did not make more spelling errors than TH; however, they exhibited a higher proportion of phonological awareness errors and a lower proportion of mental grapheme representation errors in their spellings. Phonological awareness errors and mental grapheme representation errors were related to relevant linguistic performance. Better-ear pure-tone average was related to total frequency of spelling errors and phonological awareness spelling errors, and better-ear Speech Intelligibility Index (SII) was related to semantic knowledge spelling errors. This study supports the use of linguistic spelling error analysis with CMMHL and provides evidence of the relation of types of linguistic spelling errors to linguistic knowledge and audiologic factors.