Performance of Children With Hearing Loss on an Audiovisual Version of a Nonword Repetition Task

Abstract

Purpose The aims of this study were to (a) determine if a high-quality adaptation of an audiovisual nonword repetition task can be completed by children with wide-ranging hearing abilities and to (b) examine whether performance on that task is sensitive to child demographics, hearing status, language, working memory, and executive function abilities. Method An audiovisual version of a nonword repetition task was adapted and administered to 100 school-aged children grouped by hearing status: 35 with normal hearing, 22 with mild bilateral hearing loss, 17 with unilateral hearing loss, and 26 cochlear implant users. Participants also completed measures of vocabulary, working memory, and executive function. A generalized linear mixed-effects model was used to analyze performance on the nonword repetition task. Results All children were able to complete the nonword repetition task. Children with unilateral hearing loss and children with cochlear implants repeated nonwords with less accuracy than normal-hearing peers. After adjusting for the influence of vocabulary and working memory, main effects were found for syllable length and hearing status, but no interaction effect was observed. Conclusions The audiovisual nonword repetition task captured individual differences in the performance of children with wide-ranging hearing abilities. The task could act as a useful tool to aid in identifying children with unilateral or mild bilateral hearing loss who have language impairments beyond those imposed by the hearing loss.

Executive functions in children and adolescents with hearing loss: A systematic review of case-control, case series, and cross-sectional studies

“…In terms of children with normal hearing, some studies recruited age-and sex-matched controls (Surowiecki et al, 2002), while others included subjects' siblings to control sociodemographic factors that may have an effect on children's overall performance (Ead, Hale, DeAlwis, & Lieu, 2013). The allocation of children with both sensorineural and conductive hearing loss to the same group in one study (Al-Salim, Moeller, & McGregor, 2020) contrasts with the rest of the studies, which only focused on sensorineural hearing loss.…”

“…The results of this systematic review indicate that children with deafness have a lower performance in hearing skills, from phonological discrimination to verbal reasoning, which are acquired later, regardless of whether the child had a cochlear implant or some other hearing aid. If stimuli are presented in a multiple-choice format or if recognition is limited to hearing, deaf children presented greater difficulties; however, if these were accompanied by visual clues, performance was improved (Al-Salim et al, 2020). Despite the use of cochlear implants or hearing aids, children with hearing loss do not have the same linguistic development as their hearing peers (Ambrose, Fey, & Eisenberg, 2012;Colin, Leybaert, Ecalle, & Magnan, 2013;Nittrouer et al, 2012).…”

Cognitive Abilities of school-aged Children with Cochlear Implants: A Systematic Review

“…Many studies on the CI population use large age spans and include pre-school children, school-aged children, adolescence and sometimes even adults in the same study (e.g. : Al-Salim et al, 2020;AuBuchon et al, 2019;De Giacomo et al, 2013;Kronenberger et al, 2014). Large age spans make it impossible to evaluate which age group is driving the differences.…”

The Devil in the Details Can Be Hard to Spot: Malapropisms and Children With Hearing Loss

“…In particular, a significant contribution of phonological sensitivity to reading in advanced grades has been reported (Geers & Hayes, 2011). In addition, it has been found that sensitivity to phonological structure is important for novel word learning, as measured by nonword repetition (Al-Salim et al, 2020;Dillon & Pisoni, 2006;Nittrouer et al, 2014), and for the operations of the phonological loop in verbal working memory (Nittrouer et al, 2013). However, the role of this sensitivity to the recognition of continuous speech has not been previously evaluated.…”