Investigating the Auditory Differentiation Skill in Normal 7-8 Year Old Persian Children in Shiraz

Background: Development of auditory differentiation skill plays an imperative role in the development of speech and language skills of children as well as central auditory processing. One of the instruments employed in the investigation of this skill is auditory differentiation test. The present study was conducted with the aim of investigating the auditory differentiation skill in normal 7-8 year old children. Methods: The present cross-sectional descriptive study was performed on 200 normal girls and boys within the age bracket of 7-8 years with equal numbers of genders (100 girls and 100 boys). In order to examine the auditory differentiation skill, the Persian version of Wepman auditory differentiation test was employed. The significance level in this research was considered as P=0.05. Results: The auditory differentiation score according to percentiles of 5 and 95 was 38 and 40 among the seven year old group, respectively, while it was 38.05 and 40 in the eight year old group, respectively. The mean auditory differentiation score of the seven year old children was significantly lower than that of the eight year old children (P=0.04). No significant difference was observed between the two genders (P=0.19). Conclusion: According to the results obtained in this research, the auditory differentiation score was significantly different between the seven and eight year old groups, but no significant difference was observed between boys and girls.