Beyond group comparisons: Profiling sentence comprehension in Spanish-speaking children with hearing loss and with typical hearing

This study investigates comprehension of spoken sentences with varying morphosyntactic complexity in Spanish-speaking children with prelingual hearing loss (CHL) and children with typical hearing (CTH) matched on auditory experience. We compare comprehension abilities between the groups and explore the development of comprehension strategies by analyzing theoretically defined comprehension profiles across sentence types. Participants with three to 11 years of auditory experience completed a tablet-based sentence-picture matching task. CHL predominantly relied on an agent-first strategy, showing accurate comprehension of simple subject-verb-object sentences and subject relatives, but persistent difficulties with object topicalization, passives, and object relatives. CTH showed progress along the age range examined, with older children usually achieving comprehension of all structures except object relatives. Data-driven k-means clustering supported the theoretical profiles. These findings highlight distinct comprehension strategies and developmental trajectories in later childhood, demonstrating persistent morphosyntactic challenges in CHL and providing a framework for interpreting individual differences in sentence processing.