Investigation of early literacy skills of preschool children with hearing loss.

BACKGROUND: Early literacy development is critical for children with hearing loss to develop literacy skills in the years to come. The aim of this study is to compare the early literacy skills of 60-72 months' children with hearing loss to the results of children with normal hearing. METHODS: A total of 40 children (20 children with hearing aid (HA) and 20 children with normal hearing (NH) were evaluated in the study. Receptive and expressive language was assessed by Test of Early Language Development (TELD-3) and Early Literacy Test (EROT) was applied to assess the early literacy skills of all children in the study. RESULTS: The receptive and expressive language results of the hearing-impaired group were significantly lower than those of normal hearing. Moreover, in EROT when a general analysis is made with main test titles such as, the vocabulary knowledge, letter knowledge, the listening comprehension, results showed that there was a significant difference between the HA and NH groups. CONCLUSIONS: This study highlights the importance of supporting early literacy skills, which are prerequisite skills for reading and writing skills, in children who receive both mainstreaming education and special education in the risk group and/or continue their education in kindergarten.

The importance of motor functional levels from the activity limitation perspective of ICF in children with cerebral palsy.

Our purpose in this study was to evaluate performance and capacity as defined by Gross Motor Function Classification System (GMFCS) and Manual Ability Classification System (MACS) from the 'activity limitation' perspective of International Classification of Functioning,Disability, and Health (ICF) and to investigate the relationship between the two classification systems in different subtypes of cerebral palsy (CP). This prospective cross-sectional study was performed on 448 children with CP ranging from 4 to 15 years of age. Activity limitations were studied with the GMFCS for gross motor function and MACS for manual ability. The Spearman's correlation coefficient, contingency coefficient, and Cramer's V coefficient were used to assess the strength and significance of the association betweenGMFCS and MACS. The overall agreement between GMFCS and MACS was found to be 41%. The agreement was 42% in spastic children, 40% in dyskinetic children, 50% in ataxic children, and 28% in mixed type children. The overall j value was j=0.235 (P<0.001). The κ coefficient was 0.252 in spastic children, 0.245 in dyskinetic children, 0.318 in ataxic children, and 0.023 in mixed type children. All the κ coefficients except the value for the mixed type were found to be significant. The usage of two different classification systems, GMFCS and MACS, to describe the capacity and performance in children with CP as defined by the ICF provides an easy and quick classification tool for indicating 'activity limitations' of ICF in children with CP. The next step in research should be to highlight the other domains such as participation restrictions in these children.