Speech Research Laboratory, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana 47405, USA.
Otol Neurotol. 2013 Apr;34(3):460-70. doi: 10.1097/MAO.0b013e3182868340.
The rapid phonological processing skills of children with cochlear implants early in life (ages 8-10), as measured by nonword repetition performance, will predict their language development 8 years later (ages 16-18). This core processing ability will also correlate with concurrent measures of language at both ages of testing.
Understanding the causes of the wide range of performance in pediatric cochlear implant users currently constitutes a major barrier to clinical and research progress in the field. Research into children's neurocognitive abilities such as working memory capacity and verbal rehearsal speed, in addition to conventional demographic variables, has shown that these foundational skills play a key role in determining outcomes. Here, we investigate the impact of rapid phonological processing, an ability which is critical in spoken language use, for children with cochlear implants.
Fifty-two deaf children with cochlear implants completed a battery of 14 clinical and research measures of language, neurocognitive, and nonword repetition skills in 2 testing sessions 8 years apart.
Performance on the nonword repetition task at both testing sessions correlated significantly with concurrent language abilities. Importantly, nonword repetition accuracy at age 8 to 10 also significantly predicted performance on measures of language ability at age 16 to 18 in a wide range of domains, from speech intelligibility to sentence recognition in noise. These relations were significant even when other neurocognitive measures were controlled.
Early nonword repetition performance in children with cochlear implants predicts later language development and, therefore, may identify those children at high risk for poor outcomes.
通过非词重复表现来衡量，早期（8-10 岁）植入人工耳蜗的儿童的快速语音处理技能，将预测他们 8 年后（16-18 岁）的语言发展情况。这种核心处理能力也将与两个测试年龄的语言同步测量结果相关。
了解目前儿童人工耳蜗使用者表现差异巨大的原因，是该领域临床和研究进展的主要障碍。对儿童神经认知能力（如工作记忆容量和言语复述速度）的研究，除了传统的人口统计学变量外，还表明这些基础技能在决定结果方面起着关键作用。在这里，我们研究了快速语音处理对植入人工耳蜗的儿童的影响。
52 名患有人工耳蜗的失聪儿童在 2 次测试中完成了 14 项语言、神经认知和非词重复技能的临床和研究测试，两次测试相隔 8 年。
在两次测试中，非词重复任务的表现与同时进行的语言能力显著相关。重要的是，8 至 10 岁时的非词重复准确性也显著预测了 16 至 18 岁时在广泛领域的语言能力测量结果，从语音清晰度到噪声中的句子识别。即使控制了其他神经认知测量，这些关系仍然显著。
植入人工耳蜗的儿童早期的非词重复表现预测了后期的语言发展，因此可能可以识别出那些语言发展结果较差的高风险儿童。
