A Preliminary Study on the Development of Auditory BehaviorChecklist for Infant-Toddler

Abstract

The purpose of this study aimed to develop an auditory behavior checklist in order to investigate the auditory development of children with cochlear implants and compare that of peers with normal hearing. The auditory behavior checklist developed for this study was a parent questionnaire which included a total of 80 questions consisting of 5 questions for each 3-month developmental stages between the chronological age of 0-48 months. The items of the auditory behavior checklist were selected from the literature related to children’s auditory behavior development of early childhood education, special education, and language development. The validity and reliability for items were conducted by attempting a content validity analysis, a factor analysis, and an internal consistency reliability analysis. Receptive-listening scores were obtained from 350 normal hearing infants and toddlers in ages 0 to 48 months. The results of this study were summarized as follows; First, reliabilities of the items of auditory behavior checklist showed 0.821 in receptive listening and 0.834 in expressive listening significantly. Also, the correlation coefficient about receptive-listening was significantly high ranging from 0.805 to 0.940. Second, the means and standard deviations for receptive-listening scores obtained from 350 normal hearing infants and toddlers revealed 17.43±1.91 (16.72-18.06) respectively. The difference in scores was less than 1, indicating a negligible difference. Significant gender differences were not found among normal hearing groups. In conclusion, cochlear implantation in children at the youngest age possible allows the best opportunity for them to develop listening behaviors that approximate those of their peers with normal hearing. KEY WORDS：Auditory behavior checklist·Auditory development·Reliability·Validity.