The Influence of Linguistic Proficiency on Masked Text Recognition Performance in Adults With and Without Congenital Hearing Impairment

Abstract

These data showed that problems with the correct use of specific morphosyntactic knowledge in spoken language production are a long-term effect of moderate to severe CHI, independent of current auditory processing abilities. However, moderate to severe CHI generally does not impede performance in masked language reception in the visual modality, as measured in this study with short, degraded sentences. Aspects of linguistic proficiency that are affected by CHI thus do not seem to play a role in masked sentence recognition in the visual modality.

Morphosyntactic correctness of written language production in adults with moderate to severe congenital hearing loss

“…These findings were confirmed in a second study (Huysmans et al, 2016), which additionally showed that the difficulties in the spoken language production of adults with MSCHL were likely to be attributed to auditory limitations during language acquisition, and not to perceptual limitations at the moment of testing. This conclusion was drawn from the finding that adults who acquired hearing loss after childhood performed within the range of NH adults, in spite of having a similar hearing loss at the time of testing as the adults with MSCHL (Huysmans et al, 2016). A first factor that could account for the observed errors in the spoken language production of adults with MSCHL, was auditory perceptual salience (i.e., the relative ease with which linguistic structures may auditorily be perceived from the input).…”

“…Our previous research, based on the same population of adults with MSCHL as in the study of this paper, showed specific difficulties in their grammar of spoken Dutch, such as the correct use of determiners in an obligatory context (definite articles 'de' and 'het' (the)), present tense markers (2nd and 3rd person singular verb suffix '-t' and plural verb suffix '-en'), and adverbs (e.g., pronominal adverbs and the Dutch adverb 'er' (which cannot unequivocally be translated into English)) (Huysmans et al, 2014). These findings were confirmed in a second study (Huysmans et al, 2016), which additionally showed that the difficulties in the spoken language production of adults with MSCHL were likely to be attributed to auditory limitations during language acquisition, and not to perceptual limitations at the moment of testing. This conclusion was drawn from the finding that adults who acquired hearing loss after childhood performed within the range of NH adults, in spite of having a similar hearing loss at the time of testing as the adults with MSCHL (Huysmans et al, 2016).…”