A recently published study, "Establishing a mental lexicon with cochlear implants: an ERP study with young children," conducted by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences (MPI CBS) in Leipzig and the University Medical Centre Dresden, reported that hearing-impaired children with cochlear implants (CI) pick up words faster compared with normal-hearing children. The study aimed to examine the lexical-semantic development of profoundly hearing-impaired and deaf children with CI using the N400 effect, which is an event-related potential (ERP) that reflects semantic processing, as its marker.
The study briefly explains that natural hearing is different from hearing through CI: the implant yields only limited frequency discrimination and dynamic range resulting in more hearing difficulty in hearing especially in noisy environments. The research points out that—especially in cases of children with congenital or acquired sensorineural deafness— infants' brains develop without any auditory input for a considerable amount of time. This means that even with implantation at about 12 months, which is considered as early implantation, congenitally hearing-impaired children will only have their first auditory input experience at a time when children with normal hearing will already have explored language to an extent that allows them to produce their first words.
Test subjects were 36 hearing-impaired children with bilateral CIs. However, due to excessive artefacts, six were excluded from further analysis. 13 subjects had severe hearing loss with some residual hearing prior to implantation; the remaining 19 had congenital bilateral deafness. Following their cochlear implantation, the children underwent a rehabilitation program where they received bimonthly fitting of the speech processor and multidisciplinary speech and language therapy for up to three years. Electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings were performed 12, 18 and 24 months after first implant activation.
Niki Vavatzanidis, one of the authors of the research, in a press release from Max Planck Institute, said "We observed that when deaf children get their implants, they learn words faster than those with normal hearing. Consequently, they build up certain word pools faster." Study leader Angela D. Friederici, head of MPI CBS, further explained that "children with cochlear implants could help us understand the general processes of language acquisition and determine which single steps are age-dependent."
from #ORL-AlexandrosSfakianakis via ola Kala on Inoreader http://ift.tt/2EpuMwg
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