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The LittlEARS® test battery was specifically developed by experts from different disciplines to document children’s auditory and verbal development. Part of this test battery is the LittlEARS® Auditory Questionnaire (LEAQ).1 The LEAQ assesses the auditory development in infants aged between 0 and 24 months. To date, the LEAQ has been validated in 23 languages, including Arabic.2 Another part of the LittlEARS test battery is the LittlEARS® Early Speech Production Questionnaire (LEESPQ),3 which assesses early speech and language development in infants aged 0-18 months. The LEESPQ focuses on reflexive behavior, precanonical vocalizations, canonical vocalizations, and postcanonical vocalizations in children up to 18 months old.4 The questions cover the following speech production steps: production of reflexive sounds, expression of well-being, vowel production similar to adults, second babbling phase, word-like utterances, sound-object association, and production of first words. To date, the LEESPQ has been validated in German on 362 children with normal hearing (NH),5 in Turkish on 222 children with NH,6 and in one English version in Canada on 90 children with NH.4
No validated tools are available in the Arabic-speaking region for the assessment of language development in Arabic-speaking infants. Therefore, the primary aim of the current study was to test the validity of the Arabic version of the LEESPQ as an assessment tool for early speech production in Arabic-speaking children with NH in Saudi Arabia. The secondary aim was to assess the influence of age, gender, and monolingualism versus bilingualism on the speech production development of children with NH.
Methods
This cross-sectional study was conducted on children between age 0-18 months. The study was carried out in the city of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia between September and December 2020.
The inclusion criteria were children between 0 and 18 months old, had to have NH, had to have no cognitive impairment, and the parents had to use Arabic as their everyday language were included in the study. All children included in the study have been recruited from those who passed the neonatal hearing screening test. The questionnaire was administered either directly to the parents of the children during their visit in the pediatric clinic or through personal contact with the parents. In either way, the investigator explained...