TY - JOUR
T1 - Phonological Awareness and Working Memory in Mandarin-Speaking Preschool-Aged Children With Cochlear Implants
AU - Zhang, Hao
AU - Ma, Wen
AU - Ding, Hongwei
AU - Peng, Gang
AU - Zhang, Yang
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
PY - 2022/11
Y1 - 2022/11
N2 - Purpose: Cochlear implants (CIs) provide significant benefits for profoundly deaf children in their language and cognitive development. However, it remains unclear whether Mandarin-speaking young children with early implantation can develop age-equivalent phonological awareness (PA) skill and working memory (WM) capacity as their normal hearing (NH) peers. The aim of this study was to investigate PA and WM in preschool-aged children with or without hearing loss and to examine the relationship between the two basic skills. Method: The data were collected from 16 Mandarin-speaking preschoolers with CIs and 16 age-matched children with NH. All preschool participants were instructed to complete four phonological detection tasks and four digit span tasks. Linear mixed-effects modeling was performed to evaluate PA and WM performances between two groups across different tasks. Results: CI preschoolers showed comparable performances on par with NH controls in phonological detections and visual digit spans. In addition, Pearson correlation analysis revealed a positive relationship between phonological detections and auditory digit spans in preschool-aged children with CIs. Conclusion: With early implantation, the congenitally deaf children were capable of developing age-appropriate PA skill and WM capacity, which have practical implications for aural rehabilitation in this special pediatric population.
AB - Purpose: Cochlear implants (CIs) provide significant benefits for profoundly deaf children in their language and cognitive development. However, it remains unclear whether Mandarin-speaking young children with early implantation can develop age-equivalent phonological awareness (PA) skill and working memory (WM) capacity as their normal hearing (NH) peers. The aim of this study was to investigate PA and WM in preschool-aged children with or without hearing loss and to examine the relationship between the two basic skills. Method: The data were collected from 16 Mandarin-speaking preschoolers with CIs and 16 age-matched children with NH. All preschool participants were instructed to complete four phonological detection tasks and four digit span tasks. Linear mixed-effects modeling was performed to evaluate PA and WM performances between two groups across different tasks. Results: CI preschoolers showed comparable performances on par with NH controls in phonological detections and visual digit spans. In addition, Pearson correlation analysis revealed a positive relationship between phonological detections and auditory digit spans in preschool-aged children with CIs. Conclusion: With early implantation, the congenitally deaf children were capable of developing age-appropriate PA skill and WM capacity, which have practical implications for aural rehabilitation in this special pediatric population.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85142119227&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85142119227&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1044/2022_JSLHR-22-00059
DO - 10.1044/2022_JSLHR-22-00059
M3 - Article
C2 - 36194781
AN - SCOPUS:85142119227
SN - 1092-4388
VL - 65
SP - 4485
EP - 4497
JO - Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research
JF - Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research
IS - 11
ER -
