Comparison of Working Memory in Hearing Loss and Normal Children

Introduction: Hearing loss children may have problems in auditory-verbal memory due to impaired auditory input, but likely they have no deficit in visual-verbal memory because of intact visual input. In this study auditory-verbal and visual-verbal memory of sever to moderate (56-70 dB) hearing loss students in special schools compared with normal group.Materials and Methods: In this descriptive cross sectional study, hearing loss and normal children compared by means of working memory subtest of "reading and writing in elementary school students test".Results: The findings indicated that hearing impaired children on sound, word and sentence auditory-verbal memory were significantly weaker than the control group, but they had similar function in sound (reverse) auditory-verbal memory skill with their. Normal and hearing impaired group have similar performance in letter and picture visual-verbal memory.Conclusion: According to the results seems hearing impairment is the cause of poor performance in auditory working memory. Also children with hearing impairment have the same function in tasks based on visual processing to normal children, whereas, in tasks based on auditory processing are weaker than them.