Nonword Repetition by Children With Cochlear Implants

Abstract

Seventy-six children with cochlear implants completed a nonword repetition task. The children were presented with 20 nonword auditory patterns over a loud-speaker and were asked to repeat them aloud to the experimenter. The children's responses were recorded on digital audiotape and then played back to normal-hearing adult listeners to obtain accuracy ratings on a 7-point scale. The children's nonword repetition performance, as measured by these perceptual accuracy ratings, could be predicted in large part by their performance on independently collected measures of speech perception, verbal rehearsal speed, and speech production. The strongest contributing variable was speaking rate, which is widely argued to reflect verbal rehearsal speed in phonological working memory. Children who had become deaf at older ages received higher perceptual ratings. Children whose early linguistic experience and educational environments emphasized oral communication methods received higher perceptual ratings than children enrolled in total communication programs. The present findings suggest that individual differences in performance on nonword repetition are strongly related to variability observed in the component processes involved in language imitation tasks, including measures of speech perception, speech production, and especially verbal rehearsal speed in phonological working memory. In addition, onset of deafness at a later age and an educational environment emphasizing oral communication may be beneficial to the children's ability to develop the robust phonological processing skills necessary to accurately repeat novel, nonword sound patterns.

Reasons for Language : Language and Analogical Reasoning Ability in Children with Cochlear Implants and Children with Typical Hearing

“…If language ability influences analogical reasoning ability this would mean that children with CIs, who are at risk for language delays, are also at risk for delays in terms of analogical reasoning ability. This is in accordance with studies finding that children with CIs perform more poorly on analogical reasoning tasks (Cejas et al, 2018), especially in the verbal domain (Edwards et al, 2011). This is problematic as analogical reasoning ability is essential for learning and creativity (Gust et al, 2008) as well as for language acquisition (Gentner & Namy, 2006), and pragmatic language ability (Loukusa et al, 2007).…”

“…Therefore, they may be expected 1.3. Children with Cochlear Implants to perform more poorly compared to peers with TH, a finding observed in a number of studies (Akçakaya et al, 2019;Edwards et al, 2011;Nittrouer et al, 2017;Pixner et al, 2014). Language ability of importance for non-verbal cognitive measures that benefit from verbal strategies.…”

“…Verbal analogical reasoning has been found to be associated to the pragmatic language ability of children with TH (Loukusa et al, 2007). As children with CIs have been found to perform more poorly on verbal analogical reasoning tasks compared to children with TH (Edwards et al, 2011), this might explain some of the differences in terms of pragmatic language ability seen between the groups. The reasons children with CIs perform more poorly on pragmatic language measures have only been discussed in a few studies (Jeanes et al, 2000;Most et al, 2010).…”

“…In addition, studies on implicit sequence learning show a poorer performance of children with CIs for tasks which encourage verbal strategies (Conway et al, 2011), but not for tasks which do not encourage such strategies (von Koss Torkildsen et al, 2018). Few studies have focused on analogical reasoning ability of children with CIs (Akçakaya et al, 2018;Cejas et al, 2018;Davidson et al, 2019;Edwards et al, 2011). Analogical reasoning is an important cognitive skill, which has been found to be connected to language acquisition (Childers et al, 2016a;Childers & Tomasello, 2001;Gentner & Namy, 2006;Marcus, 1999), pragmatic language ability (Loukusa et al, 2007), and to learning and creativity (Gust et al, 2008).…”

“…Children with CIs have been found to perform more poorly on verbal analogical reasoning tasks compared to peers with TH (Edwards et al, 2011). Studies by Edwards et al (2011) and Aslan and Yücel (2019) indicate that this is mostly likely due to differences in language ability.…”