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Pairing New Words With Unfamiliar Objects: Comparing Children With and Without Cochlear Implants
Abstract
Purpose:
This study investigates differences between preschool children with cochlear implants and age-matched children with normal hearing during an initial stage in word learning to evaluate whether they (a) match novel words to unfamiliar objects and (b) solicit information about unfamiliar objects during play.
Method:
Twelve preschool children with cochlear implants and 12 children with normal hearing matched for age completed 2 experimental tasks. In the 1st task, children were asked to point to a picture that matched either a known word or a novel word. In the 2nd task, children were presented with unfamiliar objects during play and were given the opportunity to ask questions about those objects.
Results:
In Task 1, children with cochlear implants paired novel words with unfamiliar pictures in fewer trials than children with normal hearing. In Task 2, children with cochlear implants were less likely to solicit information about new objects than children with normal hearing. Performance on the 1st task, but not the 2nd, significantly correlated with expressive vocabulary standard scores of children with cochlear implants.
Conclusion:
This study provides preliminary evidence that children with cochlear implants approach mapping novel words to and soliciting information about unfamiliar objects differently than children with normal hearing.
... Despite the adoption of universal newborn hearing screening programs, advances in hearing technology, and increased access to spoken-language services, many children, even those with cochlear implants, continue to develop smaller, less flexible lexicons than their age-matched peers (Davidson et al., 2013;Nittrouer et al., 2018;Nott et al., 2009). Recent research suggests that this difference may be related to delays in developing disambiguation, or assignment of novel words to unfamiliar objects, at least for children with cochlear implants (Lund, 2018b). ...
Purpose
This mixed-methods study aimed to examine the conversation techniques used by parents of young children with hearing loss (HL) during dinnertime at home. Parents' usage rates of open- and closed-ended language elicitation, reformulation, imitation, directives, and explicit vocabulary instruction were examined in relation to children's receptive vocabulary and basic-concepts skills.
Method
Twenty-minute dinnertime segments were extracted from naturalistic, daylong recordings of 37 preschoolers with HL who used listening and spoken language. The segments were hand-coded for parents' use of conversation techniques. Children's receptive vocabulary and basic concepts were assessed using standardized measures.
Results
Parents' use of conversation techniques varied widely, with closed-ended elicitation and directives used most frequently during dinner. Explicit vocabulary instruction was correlated with general receptive vocabulary and basic-concepts skills. Thematic analysis of the conversations revealed common themes, including concrete topics and sibling speakers. In addition, parents who used many techniques often introduced abstract conversation topics; electronic media was present in all conversations with few techniques.
Conclusions
Parents of preschoolers with HL may benefit from specific coaching to elicit language and introduce new vocabulary during home routines. These techniques may help develop their children's receptive language.
Purpose:
This study compares responses of children who are deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) who use spoken language with responses of children who have typical hearing on a repeated word association task to evaluate lexical-semantic organization.
Method:
This study included 109 participants in early kindergarten or who had completed first grade. The younger group included 30 children with typical hearing, 22 with hearing aids, and 21 with cochlear implants. The older group included 16 children with typical hearing, nine with hearing aids, and 11 with cochlear implants. Children were asked to give a word associated with 24 stimuli words. Responses were coded according to their relation to the target.
Results:
An analysis of variance revealed that older children, regardless of hearing status, produced more semantically related responses to prompts than younger children. Children in the younger DHH group differed from children with typical hearing in their production of non-semantically related responses: They produced errored responses at higher rates.
Conclusion:
This preliminary data may indicate an early deficit in recognition of semantic relations between words for children who are DHH and provides a basis for continued longitudinal study of changes in lexical-semantic organization.
Objective:
To examine practice variance of cochlear implant candidacy assessment and off-label indications across centers in the United States.
Methods:
Cross-sectional survey of the American Neurotology Society (ANS).
Results:
A total of 81 surveys were returned from ANS members who report regular involvement in cochlear implant care. Overall there was a broad distribution in age and clinical experience, with most respondents reporting ACGME accreditation in neurotology and employment at an academic center. The annual volume of cochlear implant surgeries varied considerably across centers.Seventy-eight percent of respondents performed cochlear implantation for at least one of the following indications within the last 2 years: profound hearing loss in children less than 12 months of age (35, 43%), children with asymmetrical hearing loss where at least one ear was better than performance cutoff for age (25, 31%), adults with asymmetrical hearing where at least one ear was better than the performance cutoff for adult criteria (49, 61%), single-sided deafness (37, 46%), and ipsilateral vestibular schwannoma (28, 35%). Centers with a higher annual implant volume more frequently performed off-label implantation in all queried populations (all, p≤0.001), and performed surgery on infants with congenital deafness at a younger age (p = 0.013), compared with centers with lower surgical volume.When surveyed regarding speech perception testing practices for adult candidacy assessment, 75 (100%) respondents who answered this question reported routine use of AzBio sentences, 42 (56%) CNC word scores, and 26 (35%) HINT testing; only 7 (9%) reported using BKB-SIN testing and 6 (8%) reported using CUNY scores. Fifty-one (68%) reported routine use of speech-in-noise testing to determine adult cochlear implant candidacy, 21 (28%) reported selective use only when patient scores were borderline in quiet, and 3 (4%) reported that their center does not currently use testing in noise for candidacy determination. Nineteen (26%) solely used +10 dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), 12 (16%) solely used +5 dB SNR, and 41 (55%) used both +10 and +5 dB SNR. Overall, 19% (N = 14) only perform unilateral implantation in the Medicare population, while 81% (N = 58) consider bilateral implantation.
Conclusion:
Significant variation in cochlear implant candidacy assessment and off-label implantation exists across centers and providers in the United States resulting in healthcare inequities. The high percentage of surgeons performing implantations for off-label or nontraditional indications reflects the overly restrictive and dated status of current implant guidelines. With greater adoption of more difficult speech perception testing in noise, careful clinical judgment is needed to maintain a favorable risk-benefit balance for prospective implant candidates.
This study sought to evaluate the effects of synchronous and asynchronous auditory-visual cues on the word-learning performance of children with cochlear implants and children with normal hearing matched for chronological age. Children with cochlear implants (n = 9) who had worn the implant for less than one year and children matched for chronological age (n = 9) participated in rapid word-learning trials. Children with cochlear implants did not learn words in either the synchronous or asynchronous condition (U = 49.5, p = .99; d = 0.05). Children with normal hearing learned more words in the synchronous rather than asynchronous condition (U = 78.5, p = .04; d = 0.95). These findings represent a first step toward determining how task-level factors influence the lexical outcomes of children with cochlear implants.
Purpose:
The purpose of the present investigation is to differentiate children using cochlear implants (CIs) who did or did not achieve age-appropriate language scores by mid-elementary grades and identify risk factors for persistent language delay following early cochlear implantation.
Method:
Children receiving unilateral CIs at young ages (12-38 months) were tested longitudinally and classified with: normal language emergence (N = 19), late language emergence (N = 22) or persistent language delay (N = 19) based on their test scores at 4.5 and 10.5 years of age. Relative effects of demographic, audiological, linguistic and academic characteristics on language emergence were determined.
Results:
Age at CI was associated with normal language emergence but did not differentiate late emergence from persistent delay. Children with persistent delay were more likely to use left-ear implants and older speech processor technology. They experienced higher aided thresholds and lower speech perception scores. Persistent delay was foreshadowed by low morpho-syntactic and phonological diversity in preschool. Logistic regression analysis predicted normal language emergence with 84% accuracy and persistent language delay with 74% accuracy.
Conclusions:
CI characteristics had a strong effect on persistent vs resolving language delay, suggesting that right ear (or bilateral) devices, technology upgrades and improved audibility may positively influence long-term language outcomes.
Both the input directed to the child, and the child's ability to process that input, are likely to impact the child's language acquisition. We explore how these factors inter-relate by tracking the relationships among: (a) lexical properties of maternal child-directed speech to prelinguistic (7-month-old) infants (N = 121); (b) these infants' abilities to segment lexical targets from conversational child-directed utterances in an experimental paradigm; and (c) the children's vocabulary outcomes at age 2;0. Both repetitiveness in maternal input and the child's speech segmentation skills at age 0;7 predicted language outcomes at 2;0; moreover, while these factors were somewhat inter-related, they each had independent effects on toddler vocabulary skill, and there was no interaction between the two.
Deaf learners frequently demonstrate significantly less vocabulary knowledge than hearing age-mates. Studies involving other
domains of knowledge, and perhaps deaf learners’ academic performance, indicate similar lags with regard to world knowledge.
Such gaps often are attributed to limitations on deaf children’s incidental learning by virtue of not having access to the
conversations of others. Cochlear implants (CIs) have been described as providing such access, and rapid growth in vocabularies
following pediatric cochlear implantation has suggested that, over time, children with implants might close the gap relative
to hearing peers. Two experiments evaluated this possibility through the assessment of word and world knowledge among deaf
college students with and without CIs and a hearing comparison group. Results across essentially all tasks indicated hearing
students to outperform deaf students both with and without CIs with no significant differences between the latter two groups.
Separate analyses of a subset of implant users who received their implants at a young age did not reveal any long-term advantages,
nor was age of implantation related to enhanced performance on any of the tasks. Results are discussed in terms of incidental
learning and the accessibility of word and world knowledge to deaf learners with and without CIs.
Lexical skills are a crucial component of language comprehension and production. This paper reviews evidence for lexical-level deficits in children and young people with developmental language impairment (LI). Across a range of tasks, LI is associated with reduced vocabulary knowledge in terms of both breadth and depth and difficulty with learning and retaining new words; evidence is emerging from on-line tasks to suggest that low levels of language skill are associated with differences in lexical competition in spoken word recognition. The role of lexical deficits in understanding the nature of LI is also discussed.
A novel word learning (NWL) paradigm was used to explore underlying phonological and cognitive mechanisms responsible for delayed vocabulary level in children with cochlear implants (CIs).
One hundred and one children using CIs, 6-12 years old, were tested along with 47 children with normal hearing (NH). Tests of NWL, receptive vocabulary, and speech perception at 2 loudness levels were administered to children with CIs. Those with NH completed the NWL task and a receptive vocabulary test. CI participants with good audibility (GA) versus poor audibility (PA) were compared on all measures. Analysis of variance was used to compare performance across the children with NH and the two groups of children with CIs. Multiple regression analysis was employed to identify independent predictors of vocabulary outcomes.
Children with CIs in the GA group scored higher in receptive vocabulary and NWL than children in the PA group, although they did not reach NH levels. CI-aided pure tone threshold and performance on the NWL task predicted independent variance in vocabulary after accounting for other known predictors.
Acquiring spoken vocabulary is facilitated by GA with a CI and phonological learning and memory skills. Children with CIs did not learn novel words at the same rate or achieve the same receptive vocabulary levels as their NH peers. Maximizing audibility for the perception of speech and direct instruction of new vocabulary may be necessary for children with CIs to reach levels seen in peers with NH.
Preschool children with hearing loss who use cochlear implants demonstrate vocabulary delays when compared to their peers
without hearing loss. These delays may be a result of deficient word-learning abilities; children with cochlear implants perform
more poorly on rapid word-learning tasks than children with normal hearing. This study explored the malleability of rapid
word learning of preschoolers with cochlear implants by evaluating the effects of a word-learning training on rapid word learning.
A single-subject, multiple probe design across participants measured the impact of the training on children’s rapid word-learning
performance. Participants included 5 preschool children with cochlear implants who had an expressive lexicon of less than
150 words. An investigator guided children to identify, repeat, and learn about unknown sets of words in 2-weekly sessions
across 10 weeks. The probe measure, a rapid word-learning task with a different set of words than those taught during training,
was collected in the baseline, training, and maintenance conditions. All participants improved their receptive rapid word-learning
performance in the training condition. The functional relation indicates that the receptive rapid word-learning performance
of children with cochlear implants is malleable.
The social-pragmatic theory of language acquisition proposes that children only become efficient at learning the meanings of words once they acquire the ability to understand the intentions of other agents, in particular the intention to communicate (Akhtar & Tomasello, 2000). In this paper we present a neural network model of word learning which proposes a possible mechanism for the dependence of efficient word learning on the concept of a communicative action. The key idea in the model is that communicative actions are initially identified by a child as cues which predict a reliable mapping between concepts and words in an otherwise noisy training environment. Once the significance of communicative actions has been learned, the child can selectively engage an associative word-learning mechanism when communicative actions are recognized.
In this volume, researchers at the cutting edge of lexical acquisition present competing theories of word acquisition that have emerged in the past decade. They also evaluate each chapter's theoretical contribution to the field. Language acquisition is a hotly contested field that lies at the intersection of cognitive and developmental psychology, linguistics, philosophy, and neuroscience. Because the word lies at the core of language acquisition, the study of how words are acquired offers a foundation upon which theories of language acquisition can be constructed. At twelve months infants learn new words slowly and laboriously, while at twenty months they acquire an average of ten new words per day. Theories that explain this change deepen our understanding of the nature of language, and ultimately provide real insight into the workings of the developing mind. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Purpose:
To determine whether 3 aspects of the word learning process-fast mapping, retention, and extension-are problematic for children with cochlear implants (CIs).
Method:
The authors compared responses of 24 children with CIs, 24 age-matched hearing children, and 23 vocabulary-matched hearing children to a novel object noun training episode. Comprehension and production were measured immediately following training (fast mapping) as well as 1 day later (retention). Extension was measured in terms of the ability of the participants to identify new (untrained) exemplars.
Results:
Compared with their hearing age-mates, children with CIs performed marginally more poorly on fast mapping as measured by the comprehension probe and more poorly on retention as measured by comprehension and production probes. The age-mates improved over the retention interval, but the children with CIs did not. Most of the children with CIs performed similarly to their age-mates on extension, but 2 children underextended, and 5 children failed to understand the task. Compared with younger vocabulary-matched peers, children with CIs did not differ at fast mapping, retention, or extension.
Conclusions:
Children with CIs demonstrated deficits in word learning, with retention being especially problematic. Their learning did not differ from that of younger children with similarly sized vocabularies.
Word‐learning skills were tested in normal‐hearing 12‐ to 40‐month‐olds and in deaf 22‐ to 40‐month‐olds 12 to 18 months after cochlear implantation. Using the Intermodal Preferential Looking Paradigm (IPLP), children were tested for their ability to learn two novel‐word/novel‐object pairings. Normal‐hearing children demonstrated learning on this task at approximately 18 months of age and older. For deaf children, performance on this task was significantly correlated with early auditory experience: Children whose cochlear implants were switched on by 14 months of age or who had relatively more hearing before implantation demonstrated learning in this task, but later implanted profoundly deaf children did not. Performance on this task also correlated with later measures of vocabulary size. Taken together, these findings suggest that early auditory experience facilitates word learning and that the IPLP may be useful for identifying children who may be at high risk for poor vocabulary development.
A video abstract of this article can be viewed at http://youtu.be/buEmjBLy5kc .
Very young children successfully acquire the vocabulary of their native language despite their limited information processing abilities. One partial explanation for children's success at the inductive problem word learning presents is that children are constrained in the kinds of hypotheses they consider as potential meanings of novel words. Three such constraints are discussed: (1) the whole-object assumption which leads children to infer that terms refer to objects as a whole rather than to their parts, substance, color, or other properties; (2) the taxonomic assumption which leads children to extend words to objects or entities of like kind; and (3) the mutual exclusivity assumption which leads children to avoid two labels for the same object. Recent evidence is reviewed suggesting that all three constraints are available to babies by the time of the naming explosion. Given the importance of word learning, children might be expected to recruit whatever sources of information they can to narrow down a word's meaning, including information provided by grammatical form class and the pragmatics of the situation. Word-learning constraints interact with these other sources of information but are also argued to be an especially useful source of information for children who have not yet mastered grammatical form class in that constraints should function as an entering wedge into language acquisition.
The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (American Psychological Association, 2001, American Psychological Association, 2010) calls for the reporting of effect sizes and their confidence intervals. Estimates of effect size are useful for determining the practical or theoretical importance of an effect, the relative contributions of factors, and the power of an analysis. We surveyed articles published in 2009 and 2010 in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, noting the statistical analyses reported and the associated reporting of effect size estimates. Effect sizes were reported for fewer than half of the analyses; no article reported a confidence interval for an effect size. The most often reported analysis was analysis of variance, and almost half of these reports were not accompanied by effect sizes. Partial η2 was the most commonly reported effect size estimate for analysis of variance. For t tests, 2/3 of the articles did not report an associated effect size estimate; Cohen's d was the most often reported. We provide a straightforward guide to understanding, selecting, calculating, and interpreting effect sizes for many types of data and to methods for calculating effect size confidence intervals and power analysis.
The goal of this study was to examine whether attachment security and child temperament predicted differences in the elaboration and emotional content of mother-child discourse in 2 contexts and whether those differences were related to a child's socioemotional development. Fifty-one preschool children and their mothers were videotaped reading a storybook and discussing the child's previous behavior. These conversations were coded for maternal elaboration and emotional content. Mothers also completed reports of child temperament, attachment security, and social behavior. Children completed measures of emotional understanding, behavioral internalization, and representations of relationships. The findings suggested that both aspects of mother-child discourse were related to attachment, temperament, and socioemotional competence, although the findings varied depending on the context of the discourse.
An experimental procedure was developed to investigate word-learning skills of children who use cochlear implants (CIs). Using interactive play scenarios, 2- to 5-year olds were presented with sets of objects (Beanie Baby stuffed animals) and words for their names that corresponded to salient perceptual attributes (e.g., "horns" for a goat). Their knowledge of the word-object associations was measured immediately after exposure and then following a 2-hour delay. Children who use cochlear implants performed more poorly than age-matched children with typical hearing both receptively and expressively. Both groups of children showed retention of the word-object associations in the delayed testing conditions for words that were previously known. Our findings suggest that although pediatric CI users may have impaired phonological processing skills, their long-term memory for familiar words may be similar to children with typical hearing. Further, the methods that developed in this study should be useful for investigating other aspects of word learning in children who use CIs.
That early word learning and speech perception skills have different sensitive periods and that very early implantation may affect later vocabulary outcomes more than speech perception outcomes.
Several studies have found that deaf children who receive cochlear implants before 3 years of age tend to have better speech perception outcomes than children implanted later. Recent studies have not found age-at-implantation effects on speech perception or central auditory processing among children implanted younger than 2 years, suggesting that there may be a sensitive period for speech perception skills that closes by around 3 years of age. There has been very little work investigating possible sensitive periods for other language skills, such as the ability to learn words. Recent work suggests the possibility that the development of word-learning skills may have an earlier sensitive period than the development of speech perception skills.
Assess speech perception and vocabulary outcomes in children implanted before 13 months of age and in children implanted between 16 and 23 months of age.
Children implanted during the first year of life had better vocabulary outcomes than children implanted during the second year of life. However, earlier implanted children did not show better speech perception outcomes than later implanted children.
There may be an earlier sensitive period for developing the ability to associate the sound patterns of words to their referents than for developing speech perception and central auditory processing skills.
Word-learning skills of 19 deaf/hard-of-hearing preschoolers were assessed by observing their ability to learn new words in two contexts. The first context required the use of a novel mapping strategy (i.e., making the inference that a novel word refers to a novel object) to learn the new words. The second context assessed the ability to learn new words after minimal exposure when reference was explicitly established. The children displayed three levels of word-learning skills. Eleven children learned words in both contexts. Five were able to learn new words rapidly only when reference was explicitly established. Two children did not learn new words rapidly in either context. The latter seven children were followed longitudinally. All children eventually acquired the ability to learn new words in both contexts. The deaf children's word-learning abilities were related to the size of their vocabularies. The present study suggests that word-learning strategies are acquired even when children are severely delayed in their language development and they learn language in an atypical environment.
This study investigated factors contributing to the comprehension and production of English language by children with prelingual deafness after 4 to 7 yr of multichannel cochlear implant use. The analysis controlled for the effects of child and family characteristics so that educational factors most conducive to maximum implant benefit could be identified.
A battery of language tests were administered to 181 8- and 9 yr-old children from across the United States and Canada who received a cochlear implant by age 5. Tests of comprehension, verbal reasoning, narrative ability and spontaneous language production were administered either in speech and sign or in the child's preferred communication mode. These constituted the Total Language measures. Spoken Language measures were derived from a speech-only language sample. Type and amount of educational intervention since implantation constituted the independent variables. Characteristics of the child and the family were considered intervening variables. A series of multiple regression analyses determined the amount of variance in Total Language and Spoken Language ability accounted for by the intervening variables and the amount of additional variance attributable to the independent variables.
More than half of the children (with performance intelligence quotients in the average range) exhibited language skills that were similar to those of hearing 8 to 9 yr olds on measures of verbal reasoning, narrative ability, utterance length, and lexical diversity. Significant predictors of language ability were similar for Total and for Spoken Language outcomes and included greater nonverbal intelligence, smaller family size, higher socio-economic status and female gender. Age at receiving an implant did not affect language outcome. After the variance due to these variables was controlled, the primary rehabilitative factors associated with linguistic outcome were amount of mainstream class placement and an educational emphasis on speech and auditory skills.
Use of a cochlear implant has had a dramatic impact on the linguistic competence of profoundly hearing-impaired children. More than half of the children in this sample with average learning ability produced and understood English language at a level comparable with that of their hearing age mates. Such mature language outcomes were not typical of children with profound hearing loss who used hearing aids. Use of a visual (i.e., sign) language system did not provide the linguistic advantage that had been anticipated. Children educated without use of sign exhibited a significant advantage in their use of narratives, the breadth of their vocabulary, in their use of bound morphemes, in the length of their utterances and in the complexity of the syntax used in their spontaneous language. An oral educational focus provided a significant advantage for both spoken and total language skills.
This article explores whether infants are able to learn words as rapidly as has been reported for preschoolers. Sixty-four infants aged 1;6 were taught labels for either two moving images or two still images. Each image-label pair was presented three times, after which comprehension was assessed using an adaptation of the intermodal preferential looking paradigm. Three repetitions of each label were found to be sufficient for learning to occur, fewer than has previously been reported for infants under two years. Moreover, contrary to a previous finding, learning was equally rapid for infants who were taught labels for moving versus still images. The findings indicate that infants in the early stages of acquiring a vocabulary learn new word-referent associations with ease, and that the learning conditions that allow such learning are less restricted that was previously believed.
Research on pediatric cochlear implantation has frequently shown that speech perception, speech production, and language outcomes are better for children who are implanted earlier in life than later. These findings are often explained on the grounds that earlier implantation takes advantage of a critical or sensitive period. This paper reviews the literature concerning sensitive periods within the framework of speech and language development. It particularly emphasizes two alternate mechanisms proposed for these periods: an experience-independent mechanism, and an experience-dependent mechanism. Based on this literature review we proposed that research in the field of pediatric cochlear implantation needs to carefully define what kind of evidence is needed to reflect a sensitive period for speech and language learning. The field also needs to consider designing studies that allow the viability of these two mechanisms to be tested. An example of such a study is provided within.
The Auditory Skills Checklist (ASC) was developed to address the need for tools to evaluate functional auditory skill progress in very young children with sensorineural hearing loss. We describe the development, validation, and utility of the ASC for use in young children with cochlear implants.
Using the ASC, we measured auditory skills in 37 subjects who received cochlear implants at no more than 36 months of age. Repeated measures analysis was conducted to determine expected auditory skill development after implantation. Interrater reliability was tested on a small subset. The ASC was compared to the Infant-Toddler Meaningful Auditory Integration Scale (IT-MAIS) to determine its validity in measuring functional auditory skills.
The ASC had excellent internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha, 0.98) and interrater reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient, 0.99), and was highly correlated with the IT-MAIS (r = 0.90). According to the repeated measures analysis, children who received a cochlear implant at 36 months of age or earlier were expected to increase their ASC score by 8 points every 3 months (beta coefficient, 8.3; p < .001).
The ASC is a clinically relevant and easily administered tool for assessing the functional auditory skills of young children with a cochlear implant. By assessing auditory skill development over time with the ASC, we can better realize expectations for a particular child based on his or her age, hearing loss level, and management strategies in place.
Purpose:
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effects of short-term parent training on maternal use of language stimulation strategies and vocabulary scores in children with hearing loss.
Method:
Six mother-child dyads participated in the multiple-baseline study. During baseline and maintenance, children engaged in a business-as-usual model of clinician-only therapy. During intervention, mothers and children participated in parent training focused on transparent labeling and linguistic mapping strategies. Parent strategy use was measured via weekly play-based probe assessments. Child vocabulary growth was measured via parent report.
Results:
A relation between parent training and use of transparent labeling was established for all mothers, and a relation between parent training and use of linguistic mapping was established for 3 of 6 mothers. Child vocabulary growth rate increased from baseline to intervention in 4 of 6 children.
Conclusions:
Short-term parent training can change parent behavior. However, parents may not maintain these skills without support. Further research is needed to characterize the extent to which short-term training can make long-term changes in parent and child outcomes.
Objectives:
Relatively little is known about how young children with hearing impairment (HI) learn novel words in infant- and adult-directed speech (ADS). Infant-directed speech (IDS) supports word learning in typically developing infants relative to ADS. This study examined how children with normal hearing (NH) and children with HI learn novel words in IDS and ADS. It was predicted that IDS would support novel word learning in both groups of children. In addition, children with HI were expected to be less proficient word learners as compared with their NH peers.
Design:
A looking-while-listening paradigm was used to measure novel word learning in 16 children with sensorineural HI (age range 23.2 to 42.1 months) who wore either bilateral hearing aids (n = 10) or bilateral cochlear implants (n = 6) and 16 children with NH (age range 23.1 to 42.1 months) who were matched for gender, chronological age, and maternal education level. Two measures of word learning were assessed (accuracy and reaction time). Each child participated in two experiments approximately 1 week apart, one in IDS and one in ADS.
Results:
Both groups successfully learned the novel words in both speech type conditions, as evidenced by children looking at the correct picture significantly above chance. As a group, children with NH outperformed children with HI in the novel word learning task; however, there were no significant differences between performance on IDS versus ADS. More fine-grained time course analyses revealed that children with HI, and particularly children who use hearing aids, had more difficulty learning novel words in ADS, compared with children with NH.
Conclusions:
The pattern of results observed in the children with HI suggests that they may need extended support from clinicians and caregivers, through the use of IDS, during novel word learning. Future research should continue to focus on understanding the factors (e.g., device type and use, age of intervention, audibility, acoustic characteristics of input, etc.) that may influence word learning in children with HI in both IDS and ADS.
Despite positive trends in the literature associated with early implantation, we cannot assume that children with cochlear implants (CIs) learn just like their hearing peers, or even just like each other. Schools that include children with CIs must consider a range of factors that influence academic and social outcomes, and balance each child’s need for challenge and support. Considerations include parent education and emotional support, language and literacy development, social emotional learning, motor and sensory development, working memory and other cognitive skills, classroom acoustics and modifications, individualized support services, classroom supports, and other ecological inputs.
Despite poor vocabulary outcomes for children with hearing loss, few studies have evaluated the effectiveness of specific vocabulary teaching methods on vocabulary learning for this group. The authors compared three vocabulary instruction conditions with preschool children with hearing loss: (a) explicit, direct instruction; (b) follow-in labeling; and (c) incidental exposure using an adapted alternating-treatments single-subject experimental design. Nine preschool children with hearing loss participated in the study across 6 weeks, with intervention implemented by 4 teachers of the deaf. Visual analysis of the results of the data indicated that participants learned the most words in the explicit, direct instruction condition and the fewest words in the incidental exposure condition. These results are not consistent with some recommendations currently made to educators. The authors discuss implications for practice, including emphasis on direct instruction.
Children tend to choose an unfamiliar object rather than a familiar one when asked to find the referent of a novel name. This response has been taken as evidence for the operation of certain lexical constraints in children's inferences of word meanings. The present studies test an alternative-pragmatic-explanation of this phenomenon among 3-year-olds. In Study 1 children responded to a request for the referent of a novel label in the same way that they responded to a request for the referent of a novel fact. Study 2 intimated that children assume that labels are common knowledge among members of the same language community. Study 3 demonstrated that shared knowledge between a speaker and listener plays a decisive role in how children interpret a speaker's request. The findings suggest that 3-year-olds' avoidance of lexical overlap is not unique to naming and may derive from children's sensitivity to speakers' communicative intentions.
Objectives: Language development is a multifaceted, dynamic process involving the discovery of complex patterns, and the refinement of native language competencies in the context of communicative interactions. This process is already advanced by the end of the first year of life for hearing children, but prelingually deaf children who initially lack a language model may miss critical experiences during this early window. The purpose of this review is twofold. First, we examine the published literature on language development during the first 12 months in typically developing children. Second, we use this literature to inform our understanding of the language outcomes of prelingually deaf children who receive cochlear implants (CIs), and therefore language input, either before or after the first year. Conclusions: During the first 12 months, typically developing infants exhibit advances in speech segmentation, word learning, syntax acquisition, and communication, both verbal and nonverbal. Infants and their caregivers coconstruct a communication foundation during this time, supporting continued language growth. The language outcomes of hearing children are robustly predicted by their experiences and acquired competencies during the first year; yet these predictive links are absent among prelingually deaf infants lacking a language model (i.e., those without exposure to sign). For deaf infants who receive a CI, implantation timing is crucial. Children receiving CIs before 12 months frequently catch up with their typically developing peers, whereas those receiving CIs later do not. Explanations for the language difficulties of late-implanted children are discussed.
This article employs meta-analysis procedures to evaluate whether children with cochlear implants demonstrate lower spoken-language
vocabulary knowledge than peers with normal hearing. Of the 754 articles screened and 52 articles coded, 12 articles met predetermined
inclusion criteria (with an additional 5 included for one analysis). Effect sizes were calculated for relevant studies and
forest plots were used to compare differences between groups of children with normal hearing and children with cochlear implants.
Weighted effect size averages for expressive vocabulary measures (g = −11.99; p < .001) and for receptive vocabulary measures (g = −20.33; p < .001) indicated that children with cochlear implants demonstrate lower vocabulary knowledge than children with normal hearing.
Additional analyses confirmed the value of comparing vocabulary knowledge of children with hearing loss to a tightly matched
(e.g., socioeconomic status-matched) sample. Age of implantation, duration of implantation, and chronological age at testing
were not significantly related to magnitude of weighted effect size. Findings from this analysis represent a first step toward
resolving discrepancies in the vocabulary knowledge literature.
Objectives:
The purpose of this study was to compare types of maternal auditory-visual input about word referents available to children with cochlear implants, children with normal hearing matched for age, and children with normal hearing matched for vocabulary size. Although other works have considered the acoustic qualities of maternal input provided to children with cochlear implants, this study is the first to consider auditory-visual maternal input provided to children with cochlear implants.
Design:
Participants included 30 mother-child dyads from three groups: children who wore cochlear implants (n = 10 dyads), children matched for chronological age (n = 10 dyads), and children matched for expressive vocabulary size (n = 10 dyads). All participants came from English-speaking families, with the families of children with hearing loss committed to developing listening and spoken language skills (not sign language). All mothers had normal hearing. Mother-child interactions were video recorded during mealtimes in the home. Each dyad participated in two mealtime observations. Maternal utterances were transcribed and coded for (a) nouns produced, (b) child-directed utterances, (c) nouns unknown to children per maternal report, and (d) auditory and visual cues provided about referents for unknown nouns. Auditory and visual cues were coded as either converging, diverging, or auditory-only.
Results:
Mothers of children with cochlear implants provided percentages of converging and diverging cues that were similar to the percentages of mothers of children matched for chronological age. Mothers of children matched for vocabulary size, on the other hand, provided a higher percentage of converging auditory-visual cues and lower percentage of diverging cues than did mothers of children with cochlear implants. Groups did not differ in provision of auditory-only cues.
Conclusions:
The present study represents the first step toward identification of environmental input characteristics that may affect lexical learning outcomes of children with cochlear implants. Given that children with cochlear implants demonstrate slower rates of lexical growth than children with normal hearing, the findings from this study provide an important direction for further investigation of how environmental factors affect lexical outcomes for this population. If mothers can provide auditory and visual cues to increase the salience of a relevant object in word-learning contexts, they may be able to facilitate the language growth of their children.
Purpose:
In the present study, the authors examined lexical naming in children with cochlear implants (CIs). The goal was to determine whether children with CIs have deficits in lexical access and organization as revealed through reaction time in picture-naming and verbal fluency (VF) experiments.
Method:
Children with CIs (n = 20, ages 7-10) were compared with 20 children with normal hearing (NH) matched for age and nonverbal IQ. Lexical abilities were examined using two naming tasks: a timed picture-naming task and a phonological and semantic VF naming task. Picture naming taps into lexical access capabilities and the VF task elucidates lexical organization.
Results:
No group differences were found between children with CIs and children with NH on the timed picture-naming task. Children with CIs generated significantly fewer words than the children with NH on the VF tasks. Larger group differences were found for the phonological VF task compared with the semantic VF task.
Conclusions:
Limited early linguistic and auditory experiences may affect lexical representations and organization (lexical-semantic connections) in school-age children with hearing loss who use CIs. Further analyses and studies should continue to examine these underlying linguistic deficits. The present results suggest a need to emphasize not only increasing the size of children's vocabularies during therapy, but also expanding and increasing the semantic and phonological richness of their lexical representations.
This study investigated effects of profound hearing loss on mother-infant interactions before and after cochlear implantation with a focus on maternal synchrony, complexity, and directiveness. Participants included two groups of mother-infant dyads: 9 dyads of mothers and infants with normal hearing; and 9 dyads of hearing mothers and infants with profound hearing loss. Dyads were observed at two time points: Time 1, scheduled to occur before cochlear implantation for infants with profound hearing loss (mean age=13.6 months); and Time 2 (mean age=23.3 months), scheduled to occur approximately six months after cochlear implantation. Hearing infants were age-matched to infants with hearing loss at both time points. Dependent variables included the proportion of maternal utterances that overlapped infant vocalizations, maternal mean length of utterance, infant word use, and combined maternal directives and prohibitions. Results showed mothers' utterances overlapped the vocalizations of infants with hearing loss more often before cochlear implantation than after, mothers used less complex utterances with infants with cochlear implants compared to hearing peers (Time 2), and mothers of infants with profound hearing loss used frequent directives and prohibitions both before and after cochlear implantation. Together, mothers and infants adapted relatively quickly to infants' access to cochlear implants, showing improved interactional synchrony, increased infant word use, and levels of maternal language complexity compatible with infants' word use, all within seven months of cochlear implant activation.
Few studies have examined the long-term effect of age at implantation on outcomes using multiple data points in children with cochlear implants. The goal of this study was to determine whether age at implantation has a significant, lasting impact on speech perception, language, and reading performance for children with prelingual hearing loss.
A linear mixed-model framework was used to determine the effect of age at implantation on speech perception, language, and reading abilities in 83 children with prelingual hearing loss who received cochlear implants by the age of 4 years. The children were divided into two groups based on their age at implantation: (1) under 2 years of age and (2) between 2 and 3.9 years of age. Differences in model-specified mean scores between groups were compared at annual intervals from 5 to 13 years of age for speech perception, and 7 to 11 years of age for language and reading.
After controlling for communication mode, device configuration, and preoperative pure-tone average, there was no significant effect of age at implantation for receptive language by 8 years of age, expressive language by 10 years of age, reading by 7 years of age. In terms of speech-perception outcomes, significance varied between 7 and 13 years of age, with no significant difference in speech-perception scores between groups at ages 7, 11, and 13 years. Children who used oral communication (OC) demonstrated significantly higher speech-perception scores than children who used total communication (TC). OC users tended to have higher expressive language scores than TC users, although this did not reach significance. There was no significant difference between OC and TC users for receptive language or reading scores.
Speech perception, language, and reading performance continue to improve over time for children implanted before 4 years of age. The present results indicate that the effect of age at implantation diminishes with time, particularly for higher-order skills such as language and reading. Some children who receive cochlear implants after the age of 2 years have the capacity to approximate the language and reading skills of their earlier-implanted peers, suggesting that additional factors may moderate the influence of age at implantation on outcomes over time.
A corpus of 5,765 consonant-vowel-consonant sequences (CVCs) was compiled, and phonotactic probability and neighborhood density were computed for both child and adult corpora. This corpus of CVCs, provided as supplementary materials, was analyzed to address the following questions: (1) Do computations based on a child corpus differ from those based on an adult corpus? (2) Do the phonotactic probability and/or the neighborhood density of real words differ from those of nonwords? (3) Do phonotactic probability and/or neighborhood density differ across CVCs that vary in consonant age of acquisition? The results showed significant differences in phonotactic probability and neighborhood density for the child versus adult corpora, replicating prior findings. The impact of this difference on future studies will depend on the level of precision needed when specifying probability and density. In addition, significant and large differences in phonotactic probability and neighborhood density were detected between real words and nonwords, which may present methodological challenges for future research. Finally, CVCs composed of earlier-acquired sounds differed significantly in probability and density from those composed of later-acquired sounds, although this effect was relatively small and is less likely to present significant methodological challenges to future studies.
Maintains that predictions of developmental outcomes based on early assessments of the child have proven inadequate. Development consists of a series of stage-like restructurings of behavior as the child advances through life. Continuities in exceptional behavior generally do not bridge these stages unless those exceptional behaviors are maintained by an exceptional caretaking environment. Such exceptional caretaking can be related to a mother's cognitive inability to make developmental sense of the behavior of her child. A sequence of negative transactions can be started when an infant is seen as being abnormal either through his history, appearance, or behavior. The parent who makes this concrete attribution will treat the child in such a way as to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Research must be directed at the variety of ways that parental levels of cognizing influence their perceptions of their offspring, which perceptions in turn influence their behavior toward their offspring. Dialectical interpretations offer a new tool for understanding the contradictions that motivate cognitive change. (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Four experiments explored the processes that bridge between referent selection and word learning. Twenty-four-month-old infants were presented with several novel names during a referent selection task that included both familiar and novel objects and tested for retention after a 5-min delay. The 5-min delay ensured that word learning was based on retrieval from long-term memory. Moreover, the relative familiarity of objects used during the retention test was explicitly controlled. Across experiments, infants were excellent at referent selection, but very poor at retention. Although the highly controlled retention test was clearly challenging, infants were able to demonstrate retention of the first 4 novel names presented in the session when referent selection was augmented with ostensive naming. These results suggest that fast mapping is robust for reference selection but might be more transient than previously reported for lexical retention. The relations between reference selection and retention are discussed in terms of competitive processes on 2 timescales: competition among objects on individual referent selection trials and competition among multiple novel name–object mappings made across an experimental session.
This prospective longitudinal study examined the contribution of dimensions of maternal responsiveness (descriptions, play, imitations) to the timing of five milestones in children's (N= 40) early expressive language: first imitations, first words, 50 words in expressive language, combinatorial speech, and the use of language to talk about the past. Events-History Analysis, a statistical technique that estimates the extent to which predictors influence the timing of events, was used. At 9 and 13 months, maternal responsiveness and children's activities (e.g., vocalizations, play) were coded from videotaped interactions of mother – child free play; information about children's language acquisition was obtained through biweekly interviews with mothers from 9 through 21 months. Maternal responsiveness at both ages predicted the timing of children's achieving language milestones over and above children's observed behaviors. Responsiveness at 13 months was a stronger predictor of the timing of language milestones than was responsiveness at 9 months, and certain dimensions of responsiveness were more predictive than others. The multidimensional nature of maternal responsiveness and specificity in mother – child language relations are discussed.
Many studies have established that children tend to exclude objects for which they already have a name as potential referents of novel words. In the current study we asked whether this exclusion can be triggered by social-pragmatic context alone without pre-existing words as blockers. Two-year-old children watched an adult looking at a novel object while saying a novel word with excitement. In one condition the adult had not seen the object beforehand, and so the children interpreted the adult's utterance as referring to the gazed-at object. In another condition the adult and child had previously played jointly with the gazed-at object. In this case, children less often assumed that the adult was referring to the object but rather they searched for an alternative referent--presumably because they inferred that the gazed-at object was old news in their common ground with the adult and so not worthy of excited labeling. Since this inference based on exclusion is highly similar to that underlying the Principle of Contrast/Mutual Exclusivity, we propose that this principle is not purely lexical but rather is based on children's understanding of how and why people direct one another's attention to things either with or without language.
For children to acquire vocabulary as rapidly as they do, they must be able to eliminate many potential meanings of words. One way children may do this is to assume category terms are mutually exclusive. Thus, if a child already knows a label for an object, a new label for that object should be rejected. Six studies with 3-year-olds tested this hypothesis. Study 1 demonstrated that children reject a second label for an object, treating it, instead, as a label for a novel object. In the remaining studies, this simple novel label-novel object strategy was precluded. If the only object present is familiar, children cannot map a novel term to a novel object. Instead they must analyze the object for some other attribute to label. In Studies 2–6, children were taught either a new part term, e.g., trachea, or a new substance term, e.g., pewter, by showing them an object and saying, “This is a trachea” or (“It is pewter”). For unfamiliar objects, children tended to interpret the term as a label for the object itself. For familiar objects, they tended instead to interpret it as a part or substance term. Thus, mutual exclusivity motivates children to learn terms for attributes, substances, and parts as well as for objects themselves.
Children may be able to gain at least partial information about the meaning of a word from how it is used in a sentence, what words it is contrasted with, as well as other factors. This strategy, known as fast mapping, may allow the child to quickly hypothesize about the meaning of a word. It is not yet known whether this strategy is available to children in semantic domains other than color. In the first study, 2-, 3-, and 4-year-olds were introduced to a novel color, shape, or texture word by contrasting the new term with a well-known word from that domain. They were then tested for their ability to produce and comprehend the new term and for whether they knew what semantic domain the word referred to. The results show that even 2-year-old children can quickly narrow down the meaning of a word in each of the semantic domains examined, although children learned more about shape terms than color or texture words. A second study explored the effects of several variables on children's ability to infer the meaning of a new term. One finding of this study was that if the context is compelling, children can figure out the meaning of a new word even without hearing an explicit linguistic contrast.
Toddlers' acquisition of the Novel Name-Nameless Category (N3C) principle was examined to investigate the developmental lexical principles framework and the applicability of the specificity hypothesis to relations involving lexical principles. In Study 1, we assessed the ability of 32 children between the ages of 16 and 20 months to use the N3C principle (operationally defined as the ability to fast map). As predicted, only some of the children could fast map. This finding provided evidence for a crucial tenet of the developmental lexical principles framework: Some lexical principles are not available at the start of language acquisition. Children who had acquired the N3C principle also had significantly larger vocabularies and were significantly more likely to demonstrate 2-category exhaustive sorting abilities than children who had not acquired the principle. The 2 groups of children did not differ in either age or object permanence abilities. The 16 children who could not fast map were followed longitudinally until they attained a vocabulary spurt; at that time, their ability to fast map was retested (Study 2). Results provided a longitudinal replication of the findings of Study 1. Implications of these findings for both the developmental lexical principles framework and the specificity hypothesis are discussed.
Research in developmental phonological disorders, particularly emerging subgroup studies using behavioral and molecular genetics, requires qualitative and continuous measurement systems that meet a variety of substantive and psychometric assumptions. This paper reviews relevant issues underlying such needs and presents four measurement proposals developed expressly for causal-correlates research. The primary qualitative system is the Speech Disorders Classification System (SDCS), a 10-category nosology for dichotomous and hierarchical polychotomous classification of speech disorders from 2 years of age through adulthood. The three quantitative measures for segmental and suprasegmental analyses are (a) the Articulation Competence Index (ACI), an interval-level severity index that adjusts a subject's Percentage of Consonants Correct (PCC) score for the relative percentage of distortion errors; (b) Speech Profiles, a series of graphic-numeric displays that profile a subject's or group's severity-adjusted consonant and vowel-diphthong mastery and error patterns; and (c) the Prosody-Voice Profile, a graphic-numeric display that profiles a subject's or group's status on six suprasegmental domains divided into 31 types of inappropriate prosody-voice codes. All data for the four measures are derived from one sample of conversational speech, which obviates the limitations of citation-form testing; enables speech assessment as a qualitative, semi-continuous, and continuous trait over the life span; and provides a context for univariate and multivariate statistical analyses of phonetic, phonologic, prosodic, and language variables in multiage, multidialectal, and multicultural populations. Rationale, procedures, validity data, and examples of uses for each measure are presented.
Recent research indicates that toddlers can monitor others' conversations, raising the possibility that they can acquire vocabulary in this way. Three studies examined 2-year-olds' (N = 88) ability to learn novel words when overhearing these words used by others. Children aged 2,6 were equally good at learning novel words-both object labels and action verbs-when they were overhearers as when they were directly addressed. For younger 2-year-olds (2,1), this was true for object labels, but the results were less clear for verbs. The findings demonstrate that 2-year-olds can acquire novel words from overheard speech, and highlight the active role played by toddlers in vocabulary acquisition.
How do children learn their first words? The field of language development has been polarized by responses to this question. Explanations range from constraints/principles accounts that emphasize the importance of cognitive heuristics in language acquisition, to social-pragmatic accounts that highlight the role of parent-child interaction, to associationistic accounts that highlight the role of "dumb attentional mechanisms" in word learning. In this Monograph, an alternative to these accounts is presented: the emergentist coalition theory. A hybrid view of word learning, this theory characterizes lexical acquisition as the emergent product of multiple factors, including cognitive constraints, social-pragmatic factors, and global attentional mechanisms. The model makes three assumptions: (a) that children cull from multiple inputs available for word learning at any given time, (b) that these inputs are differentially weighted over development, and (c) that children develop emergent principles of word learning, which guide subsequent word acquisition. With few exceptions, competing accounts of the word learning process have examined children who are already veteran word learners. By focusing on the very beginnings of word learning at around 12 months of age, however, it is possible to see how social and cognitive factors are coordinated in the process of vocabulary development. After presenting a new method for investigating word learning, the development of reference is used as a test case of the theory. In 12 experiments, with children ranging in age from 12 to 25 months of age, data are described that support the emergentist coalition model. This fundamentally developmental theory posits that children construct principles of word learning. As children's word learning principles emerge and develop, the character of word learning changes over the course of the 2nd year of life.
When children ask, "What is it?" are they seeking information about what something is called or what kind of thing it is? To find out, we gave 2-, 3-, and 4-year-olds (32 at each age) the opportunity to inquire about unfamiliar artifacts. An ambiguous question was answered with a name or with functional information, depending on the group to which the children were assigned. Children were inclined to follow up with additional questions about the object when they had been told its name, but seemed satisfied with the answer when they had been told the object's function. Moreover, children in the name condition tended to substitute questions about function for ambiguous questions over the course of the session. These results indicate that children are motivated to discover what kinds of things novel artifacts are, and that young children, like adults, conceive of artifact kinds in terms of their functions.
A spreading-activation theory of semantic processing
- Collins A. M.