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Listening comprehension of children with cochlear implants: A story of perception and language
Poster Session B, Wednesday, September 30, 4:30 - 6:30 pm, Wangari Maathai
Karen Banai1, Rotem Hagay1, Dana Mansour1, Naama Tsach1, Rama Novogrodsky1; 1Uniersity of Haifa
Introduction: Listening comprehension one foundation of oral communication, but little is known about it in children using cochlear implants (CIs). Therefore, we explored discourse-level listening comprehension in CI users and their typical hearing (TH) peers using narrative and informative texts. Methods: Two studies were conducted, utilizing different assessments of listening comprehension and different assessments of speech perception, language and working memory as explanatory variables. The listening comprehension texts were approximately 1-minute long (~100 words). In Study 1, 18 Hebrew speaking CI users and 27 TH children (ages 6-10) listened to narrative texts. In Study 2, 20 Palestinian-Arabic speaking CI users and 30 TH children (ages 8-13) listened to recorded informative texts. Results: In Study 1, The two groups had similar narrative comprehension. However, CI using children in Study 2 had poorer informative-text comprehension than their TH peers. Stepwise linear regression models suggested that language predicted the comprehension of narrative text of both groups in Study 1, whereas in Study 2 speech perception predicted listening comprehension in the TH group only. Working memory was not a significant predictor in either study. Conclusion: Children using CIs vary widely in their listening comprehension skills. Language abilities may influence their understanding of narrative texts. Further research is needed to understand how speech perception is related to the comprehension of both narrative and informative texts and to compare the two types of text.
Topic Areas: Disorders: Developmental, Speech Perception