We aimed to assess how well deaf and hard-of-hearing people in Slovenia understand verbal and non-verbal communication. This is to say, their verbal and non-verbal receptive communication competence. The long-term goal of this is to bring the Slovene speech language pathology and deaf-and-hard-of-hearing pedagogy field one step closer towards developing professional norms, to better plan interventional aid for our deaf and hard-of-hearing population in the future.
In our study, we gathered data from 116 individuals with a hearing deficit and tested for differences between them, based on the results of their receptive communication competence exam results. We compared them according to their personal predictors (background information) and their results from the practical exams of their verbal and non-verbal receptive communication competence. Participants filled out a questionnaire about their background, personal and demographic data (predictors). After that, they participated in practical exams, where they used drawing, colouring and circling to fill out two separate partially finished black-and-white drawings. Participants filled out the first drawing according to the given verbal instructions, and the second one according to the given non-verbal instructions. The first set of instructions was relayed to them in verbal language (with simultaneous oral speech, visible articulation and subtitles). The second set of instructions was relayed to them in the non-verbal Slovene sign language. The instructions were divided up into three groups, according to language complexity, frequency of words in the language and the length of instructions themselves. The instructions were presented to the participants in a randomized order, yet identically to each participant, with the help of pre-recorded videos. The acquired data and participants' final drawings were examined and compared according to an array of different predictors, in order to find statistically significant differences between them.
Our data revealed that gender, the presence of a hearing-correctional device, the frequency of use of said hearing-correctional device and the amount of experience with speech-language pathology and deaf and hard-of-hearing pedagogy intervention (speech and listening lessons etc.) are not good predictors of neither verbal nor nonverbal receptive communication competence. However, we did find out that age, the time of onset of hearing loss and the time of initiation of systematic exposure to Slovene sign language do play a role in the development of one's receptive communication competence. Time of onset of hearing loss influences verbal receptive communication competence (in favour of those who lost their hearing postlingually), time of initiation of systematic exposure to Slovene sign language positively influences non-verbal receptive communication competence (in favour of those who began their exposure to the mentioned non-verbal language before the age of 6) and age positively affects all types of receptive communication competence (in favour of younger individuals). As for the severity of hearing loss, the time of hearing-correctional device prescription, the self-reported communicational modality, parental hearing status and parental education level, we could not examine how they affect receptive communication competence, due to the inadequate size of their respective control groups, where the minimum criteria is uniformity in time and severity of hearing loss.
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