Specific EF-Related Tasks and Reading in Adolescents With Typical Hearing or a Cochlear Implant

Abstract

The acquisition of effective reading comprehension for adolescents with cochlear implant (CI) in inclusive settings is crucial for ensuring the benefit of current traditional reading curricula and instructional practices. Executive functions (EF) are recognized as important cognitive processes during reading by students with typical hearing (TH). This study compared the relationship between EF and reading comprehension in adolescents with TH and CI. Three tests sessions were performed on two groups of adolescents between 12 and 16 years old (36 with CI and 54 with TH). Reading comprehension was assessed by a standardized reading battery and EF by computerized tests. The results indicated that adolescents with CI perform EF tasks with a similar efficiency as the TH group, but the performance of CI group on expository texts was lower than in TH students. Reading comprehension of expository texts was related to inhibition and shifting in adolescents with CI.

Language and executive function relationships in the real world: insights from deafness

“…There are some inconsistencies reported across these studies potentially because of different methods of assessing EF and language or because studies conflated both behavioural regulation and meta-cognition EF tasks. For example, Figueroa et al (2022) found no significant differences between a deaf group with cochlear implant and a hearing control group on experimental EF tasks, while other authors found difficulties with meta-cognition and behavioural regulation skills (Kronenberger et al, 2020). A small number of studies comparing deaf children with deaf parents (native signers) finds comparable performance on EF measures with hearing peers, strengthening the proposed link between early communication and language experience and typical development of EFs (Goodwin et al, 2022;Hall et al, 2017Hall et al, , 2018Marshall et al, 2015).…”