[Influence of expansions on grammar acquisition in children with cochlear implants]

It was investigated whether expansions ("corrective feedback"), a feature of the language adults direct at young children, have an influence on the acquisition of grammar in children with cochlear implants (CI).

Participants of the longitudinal study included 21 children with CI and their mothers. The age of implantation was between 14 and 46 months. In the spontaneous speech between mother and child, plurals, verb markings, copula and articles were measured. The expansion of a grammatical form was correlated with the child's use of the same form at a later point in time (time-lagged correlations).

Significant positive correlations were found between the expansion of a grammatical form and the child's usage. This was the case for all morphemes analyzed. Correlations ranged between r=0.42 and r=0.70 (p<0.05 and p<0.01).

Results indicate that parental language directed at children with CI can have a specific effect on the child's acquisition of grammatical forms. The outcome of this study has an impact on parent counselling, early intervention programmes and CI rehabilitation.