Home Auditory Environments of Children With Cochlear Implants and Children With Normal Hearing

Abstract

Objectives: Early home auditory environment plays an important role in children's spoken language development and overall well-being. This study explored differences in the home auditory environment experienced by children with cochlear implants (CIs) relative to children with normal hearing (NH).Design: Measures of the child's home auditory environment, including adult word count (AWC), conversational turns (CTs), child vocalizations (CVs), television and media (TVN), overlapping sound (OLN), and noise (NON), were gathered using the Language Environment Analysis System. The study included 16 children with CIs (M = 22.06 mo) and 25 children with NH (M = 18.71 mo). Families contributed 1 to 3 daylong recordings quarterly over the course of approximately 1 year. Additional parent and infant characteristics including maternal education, amount of residual hearing, and age at activation were also collected. Results:The results showed that whereas CTs and CVs increased with child age for children with NH, they did not change as a function of age for children with CIs; NON was significantly higher for the NH group. No significant group differences were found for the measures of AWC, TVN, or OLN. Moreover, measures of CTs, CVs, TVN, and NON from children with CIs were associated with demographic and child factors, including maternal education, age at CI activation, and amount of residual hearing.Conclusions: These findings suggest that there are similarities and differences in the home auditory environment experienced by children with CIs and children with NH. These findings have implications for early intervention programs to promote spoken language development for children with CIs.

Talking With Each Other : The Role of Language Environment Factors on Early Language Development From Different Perspectives

“…This means that the results are not necessarily applicable to other contexts. For example, it could be the case that the language environments in the current study were all above some threshold of 'good-enough' for this specific sample and that certain language environment factors would become more important if studying either children with impairments or atypical development or children living under potential stressful or detrimental conditions (see for example research about MM where the child has a developmental disorder [Larkin et al, 2021], or MM where the parent has Borderline Personality Disorder [Schacht et al, 2013], or LENA-research of language environment in children with cochlear implants [Wang et al, 2022]).…”

A framework for understanding the relation between spoken language input and outcomes for children with cochlear implants

“…In a study that used data logging from cochlear implants, the amount of speech in quiet processed by children's implants correlated with their language outcomes, but the amount of speech in noise did not (Majorano et al, 2021), suggesting that speech in noise was inaccessible and did not contribute to language development. Also, noise in the home correlates with reduced conversational turns in children with cochlear implants (Wang et al, 2021) and children with hearing aids (Ambrose et al, 2014). One possible reason this effect is that noise may affect audibility and thus what children can attend and respond to, which in turn may reduce how much caregivers speak to children and the number of conversational turns (see Figure 1: the responsivity arrows from attention to speech to total language input).…”