Knowledge Bank

The aim of the present study was to investigate how children with cochlear implants (CI) perform on a nonword repetition (NWR) task compared to their normally-hearing (NH) peers. One hundred and four second-grade children participated in this study: 49 with NH and 55 with severe-to-profound hearing loss who wore CIs. Along with NWR, children were tested on four other measures: phonological processing and working memory, which were evaluated as skills that potentially underlie NWR skills; and expressive vocabulary knowledge and word reading, which were evaluated as skills that are potentially based on NWR skills. The groups’ performance on these four measures was compared to their performance on the NWR task. Results revealed that the largest group difference was seen in scores for the NWR task, with the NH group performing significantly better than the CI group. Additionally, all dependent language measures were found to have a significant positive correlation with NWR for both groups. Phonological awareness had the highest correlation with NWR for both the NH and CI groups. NWR had the highest correlation with word reading for the NH group. NWR had the highest correlation with expressive vocabulary for the CI group. NWR accounted for a significantly larger amount of variance in expressive vocabulary scores for the CI group when compared to the NH group. In conclusion, the relationship between NWR skills and the dependent language measures in the present study provides evidence for the role of phonological processing in the perception of spoken language and development of expressive vocabulary and reading skills. The results of the present study may have important implications for planning intervention strategies aimed at facilitating spoken language outcomes for children with CIs. Better understanding of the cognitive mechanisms that underlie spoken language skills may aid in the development of intervention strategies to facilitate successful language outcomes for children with CIs.