Auditory perception of Mexican children with profound bilateral hearing loss receiving auditory verbal therapy

Profound hearing loss can have serious and irreversible consequences for oral language development in children, affecting spoken and written language acquisition. Auditory-verbal therapy has been widely applied to children with hearing loss with promising results, mainly in developed countries where cochlear implants are available. An evaluation was done of auditory perception in 25 children 5 to 8 years of age, with profound hearing loss, users of 4- or 5-channel hearing aids, and enrolled in a personalized auditory-verbal therapy program. Regarding initial auditory perception skills, children performed better on the Noises and Sounds block than on the Language block. By subscales, top performance was observed for auditory analysis (Noises and Sounds) and auditory recognition (Language). A series of t-tests showed that significant improvement after Auditory-verbal therapy occurred in global scores for Noises and Sounds and for Language blocks, regardless of sex, urban or rural community origin, nuclear or extended family. The study provides evidence of deficiencies in auditory in children with profound bilateral hearing loss and how this might improve after receiving Auditory-verbal therapy. Nevertheless, the descriptive study design prevents conclusions regarding the effectiveness of the therapy. Subsequent research must take into account intrinsic and environmental factors that might play a mediating role in the benefits of Auditory-verbal therapy for auditory perception.