Derivational Morphology Performance of Children Who Are Deaf and Hard of Hearing Who Use Cochlear Implants or Hearing Aids

The purpose of this study is to evaluate knowledge of derivational morphemes in first-grade children who are deaf and hard of hearing (DHH), use spoken language, and use cochlear implants (CIs) or hearing aids (HAs) as compared to children with typical hearing.

One hundred and forty-seven children who had recently completed first grade (n = 55 children with typical hearing, 37 children with HAs, and 51 children with CIs) participated in the spoken administration of the Test of Morphological Structure.

Children with CIs and children with HAs had a lower performance than children with typical hearing. All groups performed better on decomposition than derivation tasks, with transparent than shift words, and with words that had an early rather than late age of acquisition. Thus, the performance of DHH children was similar in pattern to that of peers with typical hearing even though their overall performance was lower across all item types.

This study extends our understanding of morphological development in children who are DHH and use CIs or HAs: Similar to previous work evaluating inflectional morpheme use, we find children with HAs and CIs also present with delays in derivational morpheme use.