Visual sequential processing and language ability in children who are deaf or hard of hearing

Abstract

This study investigated the role of sequential processing in spoken language outcomes for children who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) ages 5;3 – 11;4 by comparing them to children with typical hearing (TH), ages 6;3 – 9;7, on sequential learning and memory tasks involving easily nameable and difficult-to-name visual stimuli. Children who are DHH performed more poorly on easily nameable sequencing tasks, which positively predicted receptive vocabulary scores. Results suggest sequential learning and memory may underlie delayed language skills of many children who are DHH. Implications for language development in children who are DHH are discussed.

Implicit learning of non-verbal regularities by deaf children with cochlear implants: An investigation with a dynamic temporal prediction task

“…Studies have suggested that the linguistic variability shown by deaf children might result from a deficit in their implicit learning skills [18,20,21]. However, several studies have presented data that challenge this hypothesis [23][24][25][26][27], thereby creating a vibrant theoretical and methodological debate in this area of research.…”

“…In order to obtain optimal performance in the DTP task, children needed to adjust their motor preparation in terms of response speed. In sum, compared to previous implicit learning tasks that focused on learning the elements that comprise a sequence [20,21,[23][24][25][26][27], here we were interested in investigating whether deaf children are able to learn the temporal structure of a sequence of imperative stimuli and adjust their motor behaviour accordingly. Based on the results obtained by previous studies involving the DTP task [32], we expect that children who are able to learn implicitly the temporal distribution of the stimuli in each block will perform better than children who are not.…”

“…Hence, early auditory deprivation may have widespread effects on the way these neurocognitive networks develop, with long-term effects on the capacity to process information that might go beyond the auditory system [ 19 ], thereby explaining some of the individual variability in linguistic outcomes within deaf children [ 19 , 20 ]. Experimental evidence in favour of this hypothesis comes from several studies that found impaired sequence learning in deaf children with cochlear implants [ 20 , 21 ] and in deaf adults who use hearing devices (i.e. either hearing aids or cochlear implants) [ 22 ].…”

“…Most of the implicit learning studies using unfamiliar stimuli that could not be easily labelled found no differences in learning between typically hearing children and deaf children [ 27 ], and found that variability in deaf children’s performance is better explained by age and explicit learning skills [ 23 ]. An exception is a study by Gremp et al [ 21 ], who investigated the possible interaction effect of input nameability (i.e. the ease with which an input could be verbally recoded and labelled) and sequential processing in deaf children and typically hearing children using an experimental computer-based task.…”

Statistical Learning, Implicit Learning, and First Language Acquisition: A Critical Evaluation of Two Developmental Predictions

“…Here also, the correlations with language outcomes seem relatively low and somewhat inconsistent. Gremp, Deocampo, Walk, and Conway () found correlations between visual sequential processing and vocabulary size among deaf children ( r = .29, p = .014), but not among hearing children (see also Conway et al., ). In contrast, Clark and Lum () found a significant correlation between SRT performance and grammatical processing speed (measured using a picture matching task), for hearing children, but not deaf ones.…”