Identifying baby’s hearing loss early greatly improves language skills, study finds
If your baby seems to be responding oddly or not at all to sounds, have its hearing tested. The sooner the better.
A just-published study of 120 hearing-impaired children concluded that detection of hearing problems in the first nine months of the child’s life leads to significantly better brain development and language skills, than does detection later in babyhood.
The study, published in the May 18, 2006 New England Journal of Medicine, concluded that exposure to sounds in early infancy is critical to the brain development needed for language skills. Confirming and treating hearing loss before a baby’s 10th month led to the children having better language skills in elementary school, the study reports.
Children whose hearing loss was caught early had better ability to understand and process language, though early detection had little effect on their ability to speak clearly, the study authors reported.
Source: New England Journal of Medicine, May 18, 2006, “Language Ability after Early Detection of Permanent Childhood Hearing Impairment”
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