Portland State University Department of Speech Communication
Date of Award
Master of Science (M.S.) in Speech and Hearing Sciences
Speech and Hearing Sciences
1 online resource (3, vii, 51 p.)
Carolina picture vocabulary test, Vocabulary tests, Hearing impaired children
It is important that educators use adequate assessment procedures when placing hearing-impaired children in mainstreamed settings. Receptive vocabulary tests are part of the standardized test battery and can provide educators with valuable information. Although there has been a receptive vocabulary test recently developed for use with hearing-impaired children (CPVT), the most commonly used test with this population is the PPVT-R, which is standardized on normally hearing children. In order to further explore the difference between the receptive vocabulary of hearing-impaired and normally hearing children, a test standardized on hearing-impaired should be used. The purpose of the present study was to determine if a difference exists between the receptive vocabulary scores of hearing-impaired and normally hearing children on the CPVT. This study also sought to answer the following questions: 1) What is the correlation between the CPVT and the PPVT-R?, and 2) Is there a difference between the z-scores and age equivalent scores of the normally hearing children on the CPVT and the PPVT-R? Fifty 7- and a-year olds were selected from the Portland Metropolitan area as subjects. Each subject passed a puretone audiometric screening, had a negative history of ear infections, had not received any speech, language, hearing, or reading services, and received parental permission to be in the study. Mean z-scores and age equivalent scores on the CPVT and the PPVT-R were computed for the normally hearing subjects in the study. One sample, two tailed ~-tests were computed to determine if a difference exists between the performance of the normally hearing subjects on the CPVT and the normative data for the hearing-impaired. The tests were considered significant at the .05 level. A highly significant difference was found between the z-scores and age equivalent scores of the 7- and a-year old normally hearing subjects and the normative data for the hearing impaired. The normally hearing subjects scored higher on the CPVT than the standardized data. These results are consistent with previous research that has shown hearing impaired children to perform significantly lower than their normally hearing peers on vocabulary tests (Bunch & Forde, 1987; Davis, 1974; Markides, 1970). Pearson r correlations were used to determine the relationship between the CPVT and the PPVT-R. Weak correlations were obtained between the two tests for the 7- and a-year old subjects. Kline and Sapp (1989) also found a weak correlation between the CPVT and the WISC-R. One sample, two tailed t-tests were completed to determine if a difference exists between the z-scores and age equivalent scores of the 7- and a-year old normally hearing subjects on the CPVT and the PPVT-R. The age equivalent scores of the 7- and a-year old subjects were found to be higher on the CPVT than on the PPVT-R. A statistically significant difference between the z-scores of the a year old subjects was not found.
McComb, Barbara Ann, "Comparative Scores of Hearing-Impaired and Normally Hearing Children Given the Carolina Picture Vocabulary Test" (1993). Dissertations and Theses. Paper 4620.