Effect of Early Otitis Media on Speech Identification

Abstract

Otitis media (OM) is the most common cause of conductive hearing loss in children in India. Hearing loss secondary to OM has been reported to result in deficits in auditory processing. It was hypothesised that such deficits can be more deleterious if OM occurs in the first year of life as there is maximum development of auditory neural pathways during this period. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to document the effects of reduced auditory experience secondary to OM in the first year of life on speech identification. Another purpose was to study the persistence of the negative effects of auditory deprivation on speech perception. A cross-sectional approach and a standard group comparison design was used in the study. Twenty one children, aged 5.1 years to 6.6 years, who had OM between 6 months and 12 months of age participated in the study along with age and gender matched normal children. Speech identification scores were obtained from these children for natural words, spectrally distorted, and time compressed words. Results showed that the children with early OM had significantly poorer speech identification scores for spectrally and temporally distorted words compared to normal children. There was no significant difference in the speech identification scores for natural speech between the two groups. These results have important implications for the way the hearing needs of children with early onset OM are taken care of in the classrooms of schools in India, and perhaps other developing countries.