The effect of language knowledge on speech perception: what are we really assessing?

Area of Science:

• Audiology
• Speech-Language Pathology
• Pediatric Rehabilitation

Background:

• Open-set speech perception is crucial for language development in hearing-impaired children.
• Cochlear implants (CIs) improve auditory input, but language and cognitive factors may still limit speech perception.
• The role of vocabulary and syntax knowledge in open-set speech perception for CI users requires further investigation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To determine if vocabulary and syntax knowledge limit open-set speech perception in children with CIs.
• To assess if language remediation can enhance open-set speech perception scores in this population.

Main Methods:

• A repeated-measures study design was employed in an elementary school setting.
• Three hearing-impaired children using Nucleus 22-channel cochlear implants participated.
• Language remediation sessions were conducted, with speech perception and syntactic ability assessed before and after intervention.

Main Results:

• Two children demonstrated significant improvements in syntactic ability scores after remediation.
• These two children also showed enhanced perception of words targeted during remediation.
• Significant gains in open-set sentence perception were observed in two children on a test targeting trained grammatical constructs.

Conclusions:

• Language remediation positively impacted open-set speech perception in two children with CIs.
• Findings suggest that deficits in language knowledge can impede speech perception abilities.
• Integrating language remediation into cochlear implant habilitation programs is recommended.