Early Vocabulary in Children With Cochlear Implants: A Comparison Between Three Assessment Methods

Abstract

In children with a hearing loss who receive cochlear implants (CIs) under the age of 2, regular assessments are conducted to monitor auditory and linguistic progress. However, the collection of authentic, representative, and reliable expressive language data on young children with CIs remains a challenge. The purpose of the study was to determine whether data from parental report, language diary, and spontaneous language sample are equally representative of the development of expressive vocabulary over the first 12 months of CI use. Nine French-speaking children and their families participated in the study. We collected data at 3, 6, 9, and 12 months post-implantation, and we measured parental satisfaction regarding the use of a language diary. All three methods showed a progression in the total number of different words expressed over time and captured grammatical diversity. The findings suggest that when vocabulary size is still small, the diary might provide a more comprehensive picture of development than a vocabulary checklist.

Untitled

“…Las palabras función (preposiciones, conjunciones, artículos, pronombres) que se incorporan en el habla del adulto y se usan gramaticalmente como complemento de las palabras de contenido para el empleo de oraciones cortas, combinadas con una "variedad" de palabras, alimentan el input auditivo-lingüístico. Este último concepto en estudios con niños normo-oyentes es importante para el desarrollo temprano del lenguaje (Duchesne et al, 2019). Es indudable que el crecimiento en la diversidad léxica adquirida a la que exponen los padres a sus hijos permitirá mayores oportunidades de aprendizaje de significados y de patrones fonológicos (Zauche et al, 2016), sustanciales también para la producción verbal.…”

Language skill development in children with cochlear implants and the impact of age at switch-on

“…It also examines a range of skills rather than focussing on any particular language domain. Although this assessment is standardised on a normal hearing population aged from birth to 7 years, it is commonly used with CwCIs and is the main assessment used by the Trust's clinicians because there are few language assessments standardised on the deaf population (Duchesne et al, 2020). This assessment comprises 65 receptive and 67 expressive language tasks that assess the acquisition of skills covering attention, vocal development, and social communication in the early years to semantics, syntax, and literacy in the later years.…”