Abstract
PurposeExecutive Functions (EFs) are fundamental to every aspect of life. The present study was implemented to evaluate factors influencing their development in a group of preschools orally educated profoundly deaf children of hearing parents, who received CI within 2 years of age.MethodsTwenty-five preschool CI children were tested using the Battery for Assessment of Executive Functions (BAFE) to assess their flexibility, inhibition, and non-verbal visuo-spatial working memory skills. The percentage of children performing in normal range was reported for each of the EF subtests. Mann–Whitney and Kruskal–Wallis were performed to assess differences between gender, listening mode, and degree of parents’ education subgroups. The Spearman Rank Correlation Coefficient was calculated to investigate the relationship between EF scores of audiological and linguistic variables.ResultsPercentages ranging from 76 to 92% of the children reached adequate EF scores at BAFE. Significant relations (p < 0.05) were found between EFs and early intervention, listening, and linguistic skills. Furthermore, CI children from families with higher education level performed better at the response shifting, inhibitory control, and attention flexibility tasks. Economic income correlated significantly with flexibility and inhibitory skills. Females performed better than males only in the attention flexibility task.ConclusionsThe present study is one of the first to focus attention on the development of EFs in preschool CI children, providing an initial understanding of the characteristics of EFs at the age when these skills emerge. Clinical practice must pay increasing attention to these aspects which are becoming the new emerging challenge of rehabilitation programs.
Highlights
Executive functions (EFs) are a set of top-down cognitive skills, which include response inhibition, self-control, interference control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility
To limit the number of variables that can be reasonably accounted for in the statistical analysis without introducing confounding interactions and to eliminate variation in the confounders [22], the following inclusion criteria were introduced in subject selection: normal cognitive level, as assessed by Raven Colored Progressive Matrices [23]; absence of additional handicap and/or associated disorders verified by clinical history and neuropsychiatric evaluation; absence of pathologies/alterations that could impact the auditory outcomes of cochlear implant, such as cochlear and nerve malformations, auditory neuropathy, meningitis; Italian as primary household language; child oral education setting
All children had a profound congenital sensorineural hearing loss caused by Connexin 26 mutation (11), ototoxicity (4), and unknown etiology (11)
Summary
Executive functions (EFs) are a set of top-down cognitive skills, which include response inhibition, self-control, interference control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. These mental processes provide critical support for learning. Given the relationship between language and EFs, deaf and hard‐of‐hearing (DHH) children represent an at-risk category for the development of these skills. Their limitations in receiving auditory information, accessing spoken language, and using language for communicative purposes could affect their participation in daily communicative interactions from birth, negatively influencing the neural organization and the development of domain-general neurocognitive skills that rely on auditory experiences, speech perception, and spoken language processing [6]
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