Early Vocabulary in Children With Cochlear Implants: A Comparison Between Three Assessment Methods

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-121
Author(s):  
Louise Duchesne ◽  
Natacha Trudeau ◽  
Andrea A. N. MacLeod ◽  
François Bergeron ◽  
Elin Thordardottir

In children with a hearing loss who receive cochlear implants (CIs) under the age of 2, regular assessments are conducted to monitor auditory and linguistic progress. However, the collection of authentic, representative, and reliable expressive language data on young children with CIs remains a challenge. The purpose of the study was to determine whether data from parental report, language diary, and spontaneous language sample are equally representative of the development of expressive vocabulary over the first 12 months of CI use. Nine French-speaking children and their families participated in the study. We collected data at 3, 6, 9, and 12 months post-implantation, and we measured parental satisfaction regarding the use of a language diary. All three methods showed a progression in the total number of different words expressed over time and captured grammatical diversity. The findings suggest that when vocabulary size is still small, the diary might provide a more comprehensive picture of development than a vocabulary checklist.

Author(s):  
Liesbeth Vanormelingen ◽  
Sven De Maeyer ◽  
Steven Gillis

The present study examines the amount of input and output in congenitally hearing-impaired children with a cochlear implant (CI) and normally-hearing children (NH) and their normally-hearing mothers. The aim of the study was threefold: (a) to investigate the input provided by the two groups of mothers, (b) to investigate the output of the two groups of children, and (c) to investigate the influence of the mothers’ input on child output and expressive vocabulary size. Mothers are less influenced by their children’s hearing status than the children are: CI children are more talkative and slower speakers. Mothers influenced their children on most parameters, but strikingly, it was not maternal talkativeness as such, but the number of maternal turns that is the best predictor of a child’s expressive vocabulary size.


2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 1254-1269
Author(s):  
Jongmin Jung ◽  
Jessa Reed ◽  
Laura Wagner ◽  
Julie Stephens ◽  
Andrea D. Warner-Czyz ◽  
...  

Purpose This study examined vocabulary profiles in young cochlear implant (CI) recipients and in children with normal hearing (NH) matched on receptive vocabulary size to improve our understanding of young CI recipients' acquisition of word categories (e.g., common nouns or closed-class words). Method We compared receptive and expressive vocabulary profiles between young CI recipients ( n = 48; mean age at activation = 15.61 months, SD = 4.20) and children with NH ( n = 48). The two groups were matched on receptive vocabulary size as measured by the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventories (Fenson et al., 2006): Words and Gestures form. The CI group had, on average, 8.98 months of hearing experience. The mean chronological age at completing the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventories was 23.99 months ( SD = 5.14) for the CI group and 13.72 months ( SD = 1.50) for the NH group. Results The CI group had a larger expressive vocabulary size than the receptive vocabulary size–matched NH group. The larger expressive vocabulary size was associated with the group difference in social words but not with common nouns. The analyses for predicate words and closed-class words included only children who produced the target categories. The CI group had a larger proportion of predicate words than the NH group, but no difference was found in closed-class words in expressive vocabulary. Conclusions Differences found in expressive vocabulary profiles may be affected by spoken vocabulary size and their age. A further examination is warranted using language samples to understand the effect of language input on children's vocabulary profiles.


2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 424-434
Author(s):  
Emily Lund

Abstract Many studies have evaluated overall vocabulary knowledge of children who use cochlear implants, but there has been minimal focus on how word form characteristics affect this knowledge. This study evaluates the effects of neighborhood density and phonotactic probability on the expressive vocabulary of 81 children between five and seven years old (n = 27 cochlear implant users, n = 27 children matched for chronological age, and n = 27 children matched for vocabulary size). Children were asked to name pictures associated with words that have common and rare phonotactic probability and high and sparse neighborhood density. Results indicate that children with cochlear implants, similar to both groups of children with typical hearing, tend to know words with common probability/high density or with rare probability/ sparse density. Patterns of word knowledge for children with cochlear implants mirrored younger children matched for vocabulary size rather than age-matched children with typical hearing.


2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (6) ◽  
pp. 1807-1821
Author(s):  
Margaret M. Kehoe ◽  
Tamara Patrucco-Nanchen ◽  
Margaret Friend ◽  
Pascal Zesiger

Purpose This study examines the influence of lexical and phonological factors on expressive lexicon size in 40 French-speaking children tested longitudinally from 22 to 48 months. The factors include those based on the lexical and phonological properties of words in the children's lexicons (phonetic complexity, word length, neighborhood density [ND], and word frequency [WF]) as well as variables measuring phonological production (percent consonants correct and phonetic inventory size). Specifically, we investigate the relative influence of these factors at individual ages, namely, 22, 29, 36, and 48 months, and which factors measured at 22 and 29 months influence lexicon size at 36 and 48 months. Method Children were selected based on parent-reported vocabulary size. We included children with low, medium, and high vocabulary scores. The children's lexicons were coded in terms of phonetic complexity, word length, ND, and WF, and their phonological production skills were based on measures of percent consonants correct and phonetic inventory size extracted from spontaneous speech samples at 29, 36, and 48 months. In the case of ND and WF, we focused on one- and two-syllable nouns. Results Across the age range, the most important factor that explained variance in lexicon size was the WF of nouns. Children who selected low-frequency nouns had larger vocabularies across all ages (22–48 months). The WF of two-syllable nouns and phonological production measured at 29 months influenced lexicon size at 36 months, whereas the WF (of one- and two-syllable words) influenced lexicon size at 48 months. Conclusions The findings support the role of WF and phonological production in explaining expressive vocabulary development. Children enlarge their vocabularies by adding nouns of increasingly lower frequency. Phonological production plays a role in accounting for vocabulary size up until the age of 36 months. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.12291074


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Marinella Majorano ◽  
Margherita Brondino ◽  
Letizia Guerzoni ◽  
Alessandra Murri ◽  
Rachele Ferrari ◽  
...  

Purpose This study investigates the acoustic environment of children with cochlear implants (CIs) and the relationship between exposure to speech, in noise and in quiet, and the children's lexical production up to 1 year after CI activation, while controlling for the effect of early individual differences in receptive vocabulary growth. Method Eighteen children with CIs were observed at 3, 6, and 12 months after CI activation. Children's spontaneous word production during interaction with their mothers (types and tokens) and their expressive and receptive vocabulary size were considered. The characteristics of the acoustic environments in terms of acoustic scenes (speech in noise or in quiet, quiet, noise, music, and other) and of loudness ranges were assessed using data logging of the children's devices. Results Data analysis showed that both the number of tokens and the number of types produced 1 year after CI activation were affected by the children's exposure to speech in quiet with a loudness range between 40 and 69 dB. Expressive vocabulary size and types were affected by the receptive vocabulary knowledge that the children achieved over the first 3 months after CI activation. Conclusions Our data support the role of speech environment and individual differences in early comprehension on lexical production. The importance of exposure to speech with particular characteristics for the lexical development of children with CIs and the implications for clinical practice are discussed.


2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 317-322 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Bosch ◽  
Marta Ramon-Casas

Translation equivalents (TEs) characterize the lexicon of bilinguals from the early stages of acquisition, as reported in studies involving English and other languages in which most cross-language synonyms are dissimilar in phonological form. This research explores the emergence of TEs in Spanish-Catalan bilinguals who are acquiring two languages with many cognate words and thus languages with many cross-language synonyms with identical or similar phonological forms. Expressive vocabulary was obtained in two 18-month-old groups (monolingual and bilingual, N = 24 each) through parental report using a bilingual questionnaire. Four different vocabulary size measures were computed in bilinguals, correcting for different types of phonological overlap in words across their two languages. Bilinguals were found comparable to monolinguals in every measure except for Total Vocabulary Size (Spanish + Catalan words) in which they outscored monolinguals due to the high number of form-identical cross-language elements in their expressive vocabularies. Form-similar and dissimilar TEs accounted for less than 2% of the words produced and were only present in infants with larger vocabularies. Results support the hypothesis that phonological form proximity between words across bilinguals' two languages facilitates early lexical acquisition.


1999 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 177-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
BYRON F. ROBINSON ◽  
CAROLYN B. MERVIS

Expressive vocabulary data gathered during a systematic diary study of one male child's early language development are compared to data that would have resulted from longitudinal administration of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories spoken vocabulary checklist (CDI). Comparisons are made for (1) the number of words at monthly intervals (9;10.15 to 2;0.15), (2) proportion of words by lexical class (i.e. noun, predicate, closed class, ‘other’), (3) growth curves. The CDI underestimates the number of words in the diary study, with the underestimation increasing as vocabulary size increases. The proportion of diary study words appearing on the CDI differed as a function of lexical class. Finally, despite the differences in vocabulary size, logistic curves proved to be the best fitting model to characterize vocabulary development as measured by both the diary study and the CDI. Implications for the longitudinal use of the CDI are discussed.


2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (5) ◽  
pp. 1035-1053 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marina KALASHNIKOVA ◽  
Denis BURNHAM

AbstractThis longitudinal study assessed three acoustic components of maternal infant-directed speech (IDS) – pitch, affect, and vowel hyperarticulation – in relation to infants’ age and their expressive vocabulary size. These three individual components were measured in IDS addressed to infants at 7, 9, 11, 15, and 19 months (N = 18). All three components were exaggerated at all ages in mothers’ IDS compared to their adult-directed speech. Importantly, the only significant predictor of infants’ expressive vocabulary size at 15 and 19 months was vowel hyperarticulation, but only at 9 months and beyond, not at 7 months, and not pitch or affect at any age. These results set apart vowel hyperarticulation in IDS to infants as the critical IDS component for vocabulary development. Thus IDS, specifically the degree of vowel hyperarticulation therein, is a vehicle by which parents can provide the most optimal speech quality for their infants’ linguistic and communicative development.


Author(s):  
Margaret M. Kehoe ◽  
Emilie Cretton

Purpose This study examines intraword variability in 40 typically developing French-speaking monolingual and bilingual children, aged 2;6–4;8 (years;months). Specifically, it measures rate of intraword variability and investigates which factors best account for it. They include child-specific ones such as age, expressive vocabulary, gender, bilingual status, and speech sound production ability, and word-specific factors, such as phonological complexity (including number of syllables), phonological neighborhood density (PND), and word frequency. Method A variability test was developed, consisting of 25 words, which differed in terms of phonological complexity, PND, and word frequency. Children produced three exemplars of each word during a single session, and productions of words were coded as variable or not variable. In addition, children were administered an expressive vocabulary test and two tests tapping speech motor ability (oral motor assessment and diadochokinetic test). Speech sound ability was also assessed by measuring percent consonants correct on all words produced by the children during the session. Data were entered into a binomial logistic regression. Results Average intraword variability was 29% across all children. Several factors were found to predict intraword variability including age, gender, bilingual status, speech sound production ability, phonological complexity, and PND. Conclusions Intraword variability was found to be lower in French than what has been reported in English, consistent with phonological differences between French and English. Our findings support those of other investigators in indicating that the factors influencing intraword variability are multiple and reflect sources at various levels in the speech processing system.


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