Word-learning performance of children with and without cochlear implants given synchronous and asynchronous cues

ABSTRACT

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.

KEYWORDS:

• Aural rehabilitation
• cochlear implants
• hearing loss
• vocabulary
• word learning

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest.

Funding

This work would not have been possible without the financial support of a Preparation of Leadership Personnel grant (H325K080075; PI: Schuele) from the U.S. Department of Education and in part by the Vanderbilt CTSA grant TR 000445 from NCRR/NIH. Study data were managed using REDCap electronic data capture tools hosted at Vanderbilt University (1 UL1 RR024975 from NCRR/NIH).

Additional information

Funding

This work would not have been possible without the financial support of a Preparation of Leadership Personnel grant (H325K080075; PI: Schuele) from the U.S. Department of Education and in part by the Vanderbilt CTSA grant TR 000445 from NCRR/NIH. Study data were managed using REDCap electronic data capture tools hosted at Vanderbilt University (1 UL1 RR024975 from NCRR/NIH).