Delayed Speech Perception and Production after Cochlear Implantation in Bilingual Children from Non-Native Families

Abstract

The aim of the study was to evaluate the outcomes of cochlear implantation (CI) in a group of immigrant deaf children living in a foreign language family, following up to 3 years of a personalized habilitation program compared to age-matched Italian CI recipients. Tests of speech perception ability such as the IT-MAIS, the LiP, the CAP, and speech production such as the MUSS have been used before CI and then after 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, and 3 years. Nonparametrical tests were chosen for comparison. Eight bilingual CI recipients were included in the study and matched to 11 Italian CI recipients. The difference between chronological age at implantation, age at diagnosis, hearing age, and verbal age in the two groups of children was not significant. Comparison of the auditory perceptive and linguistic abilities between the two groups showed significant differences only in preoperative MAIS and postoperative CAP (1 to 3 years). In agreement with other studies, we achieved good performances from bilingual children with CI and our personal experience confirm the attitude of promoting bilingualism throughout the rehabilitation process.

Perceptual Learning of Uncategorized Arabic Phonemes among Congenitally Deaf, Non-native Children with Cochlear Implants

“…These effects arise from sharpening perceptual categories [37] during language acquisition [51,89]. Nonetheless, for CI children, we need to consider information transmission via the cochlear implant device on top of the communication for signal processing and assimilated perception of non-native phonemes [6,[8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22]35].…”

“…Superior speech perception is perhaps the most significant outcome of cochlear implantation and directly correlates with linguistic, social, and learning outcomes [1][2][3][4]. Consequently, children who can function well auditorily with a cochlear implant (CI) can attend mainstream schools [1,[5][6][7] and learn a new language [8][9][10][11][12][13] within the normative range [14][15][16][17]. Furthermore, research shows that children with CI perform well on non-native perceptual listening tasks [11,[18][19][20][21][22].…”

“…A large body of research indicates that the perception of non-native phonemes is influenced by the native language phonological inventory in normal hearing (NH) [36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43]. In recent years, there has been renewed interest in the non-native perception among CI users [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22]. Generally, according to the perception assimilation model for non-native languages (PAM-L2), a typical hearing listener's capacity to perceive a non-native phoneme is influenced by the phonological features of their native language [43].…”