Measures of Digit Span and Verbal Rehearsal Speed in Deaf Children After More Than 10 Years of Cochlear Implantation

Abstract

PrecisThis paper reports results on the development of immediate memory capacity and verbal rehearsal speed in 112 children with more than ten years of CI use. We found less than half of the sample showed increases in both forward and backward digit spans suggesting disturbances in basic mechanisms related to storage or rehearsal of verbal information. Both spans and verbal rehearsal speeds in elementary school were found to be correlated with speech and language outcomes in high school. These developmental results provide new insights in the elementary neurocognitive information processes associated with high variability in speech and language outcomes. IntroductionOne of our long-term objectives is to understand and explain the enormous variability and individual differences in speech and language outcomes in deaf children who have received cochlear implants. Why are some deaf children very successful with their cochlear implants, often achieving "near-normal" scores within the range of variation observed in typicallydeveloping age-matched normal-hearing peers, while other children struggle and show substantial delays and weaknesses in domains such as speech perception, spoken word recognition, sentence processing, vocabulary, language and reading? Answers to these questions about the underlying factors that are responsible for the variability in speech and language outcomes following implantation have important clinical implications for improving diagnosis and treatment of children with profound hearing loss. Understanding individual differences in outcomes in this clinical population will also be critical for developing new screening methods that can be used to identify those children who may be at high risk for poor outcomes as early as possible so that novel targeted behaviorally-based interventions can be used to help children achieve optimal levels of performance from their implants and reach important speech and language milestones in development.At the present time, many outcome studies have been published documenting the success of cochlear implants in both children and adults (see Kirk & Choi, 2009). Cochlear implants work well in many hearing impaired listeners. However, they do not work equally well for all children and adults who receive this medical intervention. Moreover, the precise reasons for the enormous variability in speech and language outcomes are still unclear and remain poorly understood at this time, even after many years of clinical research on cochlear implants (see Niparko et al., 2009). Individual differences and variability in speech and language outcomes are not new problems in the field of cochlear implantation. In fact, Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final citable form. Please note that during the pro...

Sustained Perceptual Deficits from Transient Sensory Deprivation

“…This finding is consistent with the human behavioral literature. Developmental hearing loss can impair cognitive abilities, such as learning (Pittman et al, 2005;Conway et al, 2011) and memory (Burkholder and Pisoni, 2003;Pisoni and Cleary, 2003;Pisoni et al, 2011;. Thus, in some individuals, experience-dependent changes in CNS properties may impact nonsensory processing.…”

Qualidade de vida de crianças com implante coclear

“…Diversas variáveis interferem no desempenho da criança implantada, tais como: a etiologia, a idade na cirurgia e na ativação do IC, o tempo de privação sensorial auditiva, a quantidade de resíduo auditivo presente antes da cirurgia, o número de eletrodos inseridos na cóclea, o tempo de uso diário do dispositivo, a inserção na terapia fonoaudiológica baseada na abordagem aurioral e o envolvimento familiar no processo terapêutico (MOELLER, 2000;PISONI et al, 2011;SEDEY, 2011).…”

“…Essa gama de variabilidades torna o processo complexo e multidimensional e gera desafios na compreensão dos motivos pelos quais algumas crianças alcançam melhores resultados em testes de avaliação e desenvolvimento, quando comparadas ao desempenho de outras crianças com os mesmos critérios de indicação e adaptação do IC (MORET; BEVILACQUA; COSTA, 2007;PISONI et al, 2011).…”

Language Skills, Oral Narrative Production, and Executive Functions of Children Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing

“…Recently, Pisoni et al, (2011) documented deficits in WM in 112 adolescents with CIs across 8 years as measured by digit backwards span (DSB) despite language improvements. They found that more than 75% of the participants with DHH demonstrated improvement in digit span forward (DSF) over an 8 year period while only about 45% of the same participants demonstrated improvements in DSB.…”

“…The results showed reduced WM span in this population and that WM correlated with vocabulary use, abstract reasoning, and receptive language comprehension as well as speech perception and speech intelligibility scores. The deficits in WM span and the correlations between WM and language abilities have been repeatedly confirmed by an extended number of children who are DHH in later studies across different types of WM tasks (e.g., digit span, nonword span, competing language processing task, and sentence memory), ages, or nations (Dillon, Burkholder, Cleary, & Pisoni, 2004;Dunn & Markwardt, 1989;Engel-Yeger, Durr, & Josman, 2011;Harris, Kronenberg, Gao, Hoen, Miyamoto, & Pisoni, 2012;Houston, Beer, Bergerson, Chin, Pisoni, & Miyamoto, 2012;Ibertsoon, WillstedtSvensson, Radeborg, & Sahlen, 2008;Kronenberger, Pisoni, Henning, Colson, & Hazzard, 2011;May-Mederake, & Shehata-Dieler, 2013;Mitchell & Quittner, 1996;Pisoni & Cleary, 2003;Pisoni, Kronenberger, Roman & Geers, 2011;Watson, Titterington, Henry, & Toner, 2007;Willstedt-Svensson, Loefqvist, Almqvist, & Sahlen, 2004).…”