Effects of Otitis Media on Word Recognition of 7 to 9 Year-Olds

Possible auditory deprivation due to otitis media (OM) must be investigated to appropriately identify and re/habilitate children affected by OM early in life. Word recognition ability of consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words was examined in 7 to 9 year-old children with and without a history of OM. Time-compression (TC) and multi-talker-noise (MTN) background noise were used to stress the auditory system. All subjects had language skills within normal limits, as verified by a score greater than or equal to the 16th percentile on the CELF-R and the TONI-2. Three levels of TC (0%, 30%, 60%) and 4 levels of signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio (MT noise: no noise, +5, 0, -5) were used. Children with a positive history of OM performed similarly to children with a negative history of OM in all conditions. Both TC and S/N ratio had an adverse effect on word recognition performance; as TC increased, word recognition decreased and as S/N ratio decreased, word recognition also decreased. Seven year-old children performed significantly poorer than eight and nine year-old children, who performed similarly