Phonological Priming as a Lens for Phonological Organization in Children With Cochlear Implants

To evaluate the subconscious knowledge of between-word phonological similarities in children with cochlear implants as compared with children with typical hearing.

Participants included 30 children with cochlear implants between the ages of five and seven who used primarily spoken English to communicate, 30 children matched for chronological age, and 30 children matched for vocabulary size. Participants completed an animacy judgment task in either a (a) neutral condition, (b) a phonological prime condition where the consonant and vowel onset of the pictured word was presented prior to the visual target's appearance, (c) an inhibition prime condition where a consonant and vowel onset not matching the pictured word was presented prior to the target's appearance. Reaction times were recorded.

Children with cochlear implants reacted differently and more slowly than children with typical hearing in both groups to the primes: children with typical hearing experienced a phonological facilitation effect in the phonological prime condition, whereas children with cochlear implants did not. Children with cochlear implants also had reaction times that, overall, were slower than children matched for chronological age but similar to children matched for vocabulary size.

The different experience of children with cochlear implants with phonological facilitation and inhibition effects may indicate children with cochlear implants have phonological organization strategies that are different from those of children with typical hearing.