Speech Accuracy and Reading in Children with Cochlear Implants

Sentence comprehension and production in children with cochlear implants: Errorless procedures and equivalence‐based instruction

“…Initially, the participants performed with greater than 70% accurate reading (CD) and below 60% accurate tacting (BD). These results confirm previous findings that readers children with CI usually show the speech more accurate in response to textual stimuli (reading, CD) than to pictures (tacting, BD), both at word (Anastácio-Pessan et al, 2015;Lucchesi et al, 2022) and sentence levels (Neves et al, 2018;Silva et al, 2017). These findings highlight the functional independence between tacting and reading (or textual behavior) (Skinner, 1957) as well as the need for teaching conditions that can integrate these verbal repertoires, such as EBI (Almeida-Verdu & Golfeto, 2016;Pilgrim, 2020;Sidman, 1986).…”

“…Further studies in our laboratories supported EBI as a behavioral technology for this population in achieving speech accuracy, the interdependence between listening and speaking repertories, and the integration of verbal operants, such as reading (or textual behavior) and pictures tacting (Anastácio‐Pessan et al., 2015; Lucchesi et al., 2022; Neves et al., 2018; Silva et al., 2017). Children with CI who are readers show more accurate vocalization to textual stimuli than to pictures (Anastácio‐Pessan et al., 2015; Lucchesi et al., 2022; Neves et al., 2018; Silva et al., 2017), indicating functional independence of the verbal operants and multiple sources of stimulus control over speech production (Skinner, 1957).…”

“…Further studies in our laboratories supported EBI as a behavioral technology for this population in achieving speech accuracy, the interdependence between listening and speaking repertories, and the integration of verbal operants, such as reading (or textual behavior) and pictures tacting (Anastácio‐Pessan et al., 2015; Lucchesi et al., 2022; Neves et al., 2018; Silva et al., 2017). Children with CI who are readers show more accurate vocalization to textual stimuli than to pictures (Anastácio‐Pessan et al., 2015; Lucchesi et al., 2022; Neves et al., 2018; Silva et al., 2017), indicating functional independence of the verbal operants and multiple sources of stimulus control over speech production (Skinner, 1957). For these children, the graphemes—or minimal textual units—had been established as discriminative stimuli, which occasion accurate vocalizations corresponding to those minimal units, while the sequence of the graphemes in words can function as discriminative stimuli for sequencing the production of sounds (de Souza et al., 2009).…”

“…Semantic productivity and integration tacting and reading also were documented in the present study by demonstrating the class‐consistent verbal responding after EBI. The accurate speech, which had been observed to text prior to teaching (>90% correct responses in CD relations baseline, with little variability across participants), came to be demonstrated with pictorial stimuli as well as these stimuli became class members based on the EBI (Anastácio‐Pessan et al., 2015; Lucchesi et al., 2022; Neves et al., 2018; Silva et al., 2017). The pictures also came to exert control over construction written sentence (BE), and five participants responded consistently after the EBI.…”