Results support provision of cochlear implants younger than 12 months of age for children with severe to profound hearing loss to optimize speech perception and subsequent language acquisition and speech production accuracy.
Purpose
Normal-hearing (NH) children acquire plural morphemes at different rates, with the segmental allomorphs /–s, –z/ (e.g.,
cat-s
) being acquired before the syllabic allomorph /–əz/ (e.g.,
bus-es
). Children with hearing loss (HL) have been reported to show delays in the production of plural morphology, raising the possibility that this might be due to challenges acquiring different types of lexical/morphological representations. This study therefore examined the comprehension of plural morphology by 3- to 7-year-olds with HL and compared this with performance by their NH peers. We also investigated comprehension as a function of wearing hearing aids (HAs) versus cochlear implants (CIs).
Method
Participants included 129 NH children aged 3–5 years and 25 children with HL aged 3–7 years (13 with HAs, 12 with CIs). All participated in a novel word two-alternative forced-choice task presented on an iPad. The task tested comprehension of the segmental (e.g.,
teps, mubz
) and syllabic (e.g.,
kosses
) plural, as well as their singular counterparts (e.g.,
tep, mub, koss
).
Results
While the children with NH were above chance for all conditions, those with HL performed at chance. As a group, the performance of the children with HL did not improve with age. However, results suggest possible differences between children with HAs and those with CIs, where those with HAs appeared to be in the process of developing representations of consonant–vowel–consonant singulars.
Conclusions
Results suggest that preschoolers with HL do not yet have a robust representation of plural morphology for words they have not heard before. However, those with HAs are beginning to access the singular/plural system as they get older.
BackgroundSocial inclusion is a common focus of listening and spoken language (LSL) early intervention for children with hearing loss. This exploratory study compared the social inclusion of young children with hearing loss educated using a listening and spoken language approach with population data.MethodsA framework for understanding the scope of social inclusion is presented in the Background. This framework guided the use of a shortened, modified version of the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC) to measure two of the five facets of social inclusion (‘education’ and ‘interacting with society and fulfilling social goals’). The survey was completed by parents of children with hearing loss aged 4–5 years who were educated using a LSL approach (n = 78; 37% who responded). These responses were compared to those obtained for typical hearing children in the LSAC dataset (n = 3265).ResultsAnalyses revealed that most children with hearing loss had comparable outcomes to those with typical hearing on the ‘education’ and ‘interacting with society and fulfilling social roles’ facets of social inclusion.ConclusionsThese exploratory findings are positive and warrant further investigation across all five facets of the framework to identify which factors influence social inclusion.
Many children with hearing loss have atypical social communication skills despite having age-appropriate speech and language. Graduate assessments in an early intervention program for children with hearing loss indicated that despite achieving language skills within typical limits for over a decade, social skills development was frequently delayed. Data gathered in 2007 and 2012 indicated the majority of children with hearing loss demonstrated poor acquisition of concepts linked to theory of mind (ToM), achieving either delayed or alternative acquisition patterns. A small-group 8-week social skills intervention program was subsequently implemented for graduating cohorts with the aim of developing and improving social interactions. In 2017, measures of ToM were collected for 15 children with hearing loss aged 4–6 years and compared to ToM 2007 and 2012 cohort data. An additional measure of social understanding and flexibility, a persuasion task, was also implemented. Although ToM skills for the majority of the 2017 cohort were found to be on par with hearing peers, and were better than skills demonstrated by the 2007 and 2012 graduates, ability to successfully participate in a socially significant persuasion task with a peer was delayed. Challenges and solutions to the development of age-appropriate social skills are proposed.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.