Story Retelling Skills of 6-7 Years Old Persian speaking Children with Cochlear Implant ‎

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Department of Speech Therapy, School of Paramedical Sciences, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran

2 Department of Speech Therapy, Faculty of Rehabilitation Sciences, Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz, Iran

Abstract

Purpose:
Narrative analysis is a practical tool for comprehensive assessment of language, especially in preschoolers. The main aim of the current study was to analysis narratives of preschool children with cochlear implant (CI) and comparing it with typically developing (TD) children.   
Methods:
In this cross-sectional study, the language performances of eighteen 6-7 years old children with CI and 18 TD children were compared by application of a standardized story retelling test. Inclusion criteria for participants with CI were: being monolingual speaker of Persian; having congenital and non-progressive hearing loss; experiencing the surgery of cochlear implantation before the age 4 and a having history of auditory-verbal therapy. Each of the participants of control group were matched with one participant in CI group in terms of age, gender and socioeconomic status. The mean and standard deviation of the scores of the variables were calculated. The mean and standard deviation of the macro-structure and micro-structure variables were calculated in all participants. Independent t-test non-parametric test of Mann-Whitney, was used to compare the results.
Results:
The mean scores of CI group in both macro and micro structures of language were significantly lower than the TD group (p<0.05).
Conclusion:
The significant weaknesses of children with cochlear implant at both macrostructure and microstructure aspects of language, alongsid the importance of narrative skills as the predictor of academic performnces, indicates the need to pay more attention to narrative based therapy in the training programs of these children, especially before entering the school.

Keywords


  1. Cupples L, Ching TY, Button L, Leigh G, et al. Language and speech outcomes of children with hearing loss and additional disabilities: identifying the variables that influence performance at five years of age. International journal of audiology 2018; 57(sup2) : S93-S104.
  2. Halliday LF, Tuomainen O, Rosen S. Language development and impairment in children with mild to moderate sensorineural hearing loss. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 2017; 60(6): 1551-1567
  3. Moeller MP, McCreery R. Children Who Are Hard of Hearing: Still Forgotten? A longitudinal study points to factors affecting language outcomes for children with mild to severe hearing loss who use hearing aids. The ASHA Leader 2017; 22(6): 16-17.
  4. DistinguinL, Blanchard M, Rouillon I, Parodi M, Loundon N. Pediatric cochlear reimplantation: Decision-tree efficacy. European annals of otorhinolaryngology, head and neck diseases 2018; 135(4): 243-247.
  5. Ruben RJ. Language development in the pediatric cochlear implant patient. Laryngoscope investigative otolaryngology 2018; 3(3): 209-213.
  6. Szarkowski A. Language development in children with cochlear implants: Possibilities and challenges.  Language deprivation and deaf mental health. New York: Routledge. 2018.
  7. Levine D, Strother-Garcia K, Golinkoff RM, Hirsh-Pasek K. Language development in the first year of life: What deaf children might be missing before cochlear implantation. Otology & Neurotology 2016; 37(2): 56-62.
  8. Bowers LM, Dostal H, Wolbers KA, Graham SC. The assessment of written phrasal constructs and grammar of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students with varying expressive language abilities. Education Research International 2018; 2018: 1-10
  9. Davies B, Xu Rattanasone N, Davis A, Demuth K. The Acquisitionof Productive Plural Morphology by Children with Hearing Loss. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 2020:63(2):552-568.
  10. Hammer A, Coene M. Finite verb morphology in the spontaneous speech of Dutch-speaking children with hearing loss. Ear and hearing 2016; 37(1): 64-72.
  11. Werfel KL. Morphosyntax production of preschool children with hearing loss: An evaluation of the extended optional infinitive and surface accounts. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 2018; 61(9): 2313-2324.
  12. Zamani P, Soleymani Z, Rashedi V, Farahani F, et al. Spoken and Written Narrative in Persian-Speaking Students Who Received Cochlear Implant and/or Hearing Aid. Clinicaland experimental otorhinolaryngology 2018; 11(4): 250-258.
  13. Socher M, Lyxell B, Ellis R, Gärskog M, et al. Pragmatic Language Skills: A Comparison of Children with Cochlear Implants and Children Without Hearing Loss. Frontiers in psychology 2019; 10.
  14. Westby C. Keep This Theory in Mind: Children who are deaf or hard of hearing often struggle with pragmatic skills, specifically the “theory of mind,” an expert says. The ASHA Leader 2017; 22(4): 18-20.
  15. Eisenberg SL, Guo L-Y, Mucchetti E. Eliciting the language sample for developmental sentence scoring: A comparison of play with toys and elicited picture description. American journal of speech-language pathology 2018; 27(2): 633-646.
  16. Halle F, Duchesne L. Morphosyntactic skills in deaf children with cochlear implants: A systematic review. Canadian Journal of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology 2015; 39(3): 260-297.
  17. Murri A, Cuda D, Guerzoni L, Fabrizi E. Narrative abilities in early implanted children. The Laryngoscope 2015; 125(7): 1685-90.
  18. Barron HD. Microlinguistic and fluency characteristics of narrative and expository discourse in adolescents with traumatic brain injury[disssertation]: The Ohio State University; 2018.
  19. Jarollahi F, Mohamadi R, Modarresi Y, Agharasouli Z, et al. Story retelling skills in Persian speaking hearing-impaired children. International journal of pediatric otorhinolaryngology 2017; 96: 84-88.
  20. Rezaei Rad M, Lofi G, Seif Panahi MS, Ghasemi A, editors. Comparison of the Narrative Discourse Skills of Children with Normal Growth and Cochlear Implants. 16th Iranian Speech Therapy Conference; 2018; Tehran, Iranian: Iranian Speech Therapy Association. [Persian]
  21. Jafari S, Agharasouli Z, Modaresi Y, Kamali M. Developing a story retelling test for the assessment of language structure in Persian-speaking children. Bimonthly Audiology-Tehran Universi5ty of Medical Sciences 2012; 21(3): 51-61. [Persian]
  22. Nittrouer S, Sansom E, Low K, Rice C, Caldwell-Tarr A. Language structures used by kindergartners with cochlear implants: Relationship to phonological awareness, lexical knowledge and hearing loss. Ear and Hearing. 2014; 35(5): 506-518
  23. Hansson K, Ibertsson T, Asker-Árnason L, Sahlén B. Language impairment inchildren with CI: An investigation of Swedish. Lingua 2018; 213: 63-77.
  24. Jarollahi F, Modarresi Y, Agharasouli Z, Jafari S. A preliminary study of some pragmatic skills of hearing and hearing-impaired children by story retelling test. Bimonthly Audiology-Tehran University of Medical Sciences 2013; 22(1): 95-102. [Persian]
  25. Geers AE, Nicholas J, Tobey E, Davidson L. Persistent language delay versus late language emergence in children with early cochlear implantation. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 2016; 59(1): 155-170.
  26. Jones A, Toscano E, Botting N, Atkinson J, Denmark T, Herman R, et al. Narrative skills in deaf children who use spoken English: Dissociations between macro and microstructural devices. Research in developmental disabilities2016; 59: 268-82.
  27. Most T, Shina-August E, Meilijson S. Pragmatic abilities of children with hearing loss using cochlear implants or hearing aids compared to hearing children. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 2010; 15(4): 422-437.
  28. Nikolopoulos TP, Lloyd H, Starczewski H, Gallaway C. Using SNAP Dragons to monitor narrative abilities in young deaf children following cochlear implantation. International journal of pediatric otorhinolaryngology 2003; 67(5): 535-41.
  29. Ebbels SH, McCartney E, Slonims V, Dockrell JE, Norbury CF. Evidence‐based pathways to intervention for children with language disorders. International journal of language & communication disorders 2019;54(1):3-19.
  30. Moeller MP, McCleary E, Putman C, Tyler-Krings A, et al. Longitudinal development of phonology and morphology in children with late-identified mild-moderate sensorineural hearing loss. Ear and Hearing 2010; 31(5): 625-635.
  31. Hall A, Wills A, Mahmoud O, Sell D, et al. Centre‐level variation in outcomes and treatment for otitis media with effusion and hearing loss and the association of hearing loss with developmental outcomes at ages 5 and 7 years in children with non‐syndromic unilateral cleft lip and palate: The Cleft Care UK study. Part 2. Orthodontics & craniofacial research 2017; 20: 8-18.
  32. Justice LM, Jiang H, Purtell KM, Schmeer K, et al. Conditions of poverty, parent–child interactions, and toddlers’ early language skills in low-income families. Maternal and child health journal 2019; 23(7): 971-978.
  33. Eisenberg LS, Hammes Ganguly D, Martinez AS, Fisher LM, et al. Early communication development of children with auditory brainstem implants. The Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 2018; 23(3): 249-260.
  34. Wenrich KA, Davidson LS, Uchanski RM. The Effect of Cochlear Implant Interval on Spoken Language Skills of Pediatric Bilateral Cochlear Implant Users. Otology & Neurotology 2019; 40(6): e600-e5.