Lexical Access in Preschool Mandarin-Speaking Children With Cochlear Implants

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Audiology
• Developmental Psychology

Background:

• Children with cochlear implants (CIs) have limited spoken language exposure.
• Mandarin Chinese relies on pitch for word meaning, posing challenges for CI users due to degraded auditory signals.
• This can impede language development in Mandarin-speaking children with CIs.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate lexical access in preschool Mandarin-speaking children with CIs compared to normal hearing (NH) peers.
• To test the hypothesis that while naming ability is comparable, phonological and semantic processing may differ between groups.
• To explore how CI technology affects spoken language processing in young children.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a cross-modal visual-auditory picture-word interference paradigm with 20 children with CIs and 20 NH children.
• Employed phonologically related, semantically related, and unrelated auditory distractors presented at varying times relative to visual targets.
• Measured accuracy for naming ability and reaction time to assess phonological and semantic processing effects.

Main Results:

• No significant differences in accuracy (naming ability) were found between children with CIs and NH peers.
• Phonologically related distractors improved accuracy and reaction time in both groups, indicating a phonological priming effect.
• The CI group exhibited quicker overall responses but showed delayed processing of phonological information when auditory and visual stimuli were simultaneous.

Conclusions:

• Children with CIs exhibit equivalent word retrieval and production skills to NH children.
• Both groups demonstrate phonological priming but lack a significant semantic effect.
• Children with CIs process phonological information later than NH peers and may respond faster due to task-directed focus.