Comparison of Expressive Spoken Language Skills in Children With Cochlear Implants and Children With Typical Hearing.

Michaela Socher,Rachel Jane Ellis,Malin Wass,Björn Lyxell

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01405

Abstract

When children start formal education, they are expected to be able to express complex thoughts. However, in order to do so, they need to be able to use both complex grammatical structures and a variety of words. One group that is at risk of having a delay in terms of their expressive language ability is children with cochlear implants (CI). In this study, we evaluated whether children with CI perform comparably to children with typical hearing (TH) on a standard expressive spoken grammar and a standard expressive spoken vocabulary task when the groups were matched on non-verbal intelligence and working memory capacity. It was found that the children with CI in this study performed more poorly on a standard expressive spoken vocabulary task but not on a standard expressive spoken grammar task when compared to the children with TH. Differences in terms of expressive spoken vocabulary do not seem to be explained by differences in cognitive ability. In addition, the variation in terms of expressive spoken language ability was larger in the children with CI compared to the children with TH. This might be explained by additional confounding factors, like the time of language deprivation or by a greater influence of cognitive differences for the acquisition of spoken language for children with CI.

Highlights

When children reach school-age, they are expected to use their native language with ease
The aim of the current study is to evaluate whether differences in spoken expressive language in terms of average performance, like those found by, for example, Boons et al (2013), and variance, like found, for example, by Hess et al (2014) are still observed when comparing children with cochlear implants (CI) to children with typical hearing (TH) matched on non-verbal intelligence and verbal working memory
The results indicated that children with CI perform significantly more poorly on an expressive spoken vocabulary task compared to children with TH but that there is no significant difference between the groups in terms of expressive spoken grammar

Summary

Introduction

When children reach school-age, they are expected to use their native language with ease. They should be able to use both complex grammatical structures and a large variety of words. This language proficiency is necessary to express complex thoughts, beliefs, and desires, which is essential to participate in learning and social activities in school. One group that is at risk of not being able to use language in an age-appropriate way when starting formal education is deaf and hard of hearing children with cochlear implants (CI) (Geers et al, 2009). We aim to evaluate whether differences in expressive spoken language ability between children with CI and children with typical hearing (TH) can be explained by cognitive differences, and whether individual differences in cognitive abilities

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Discussion

Conclusion