School of Psychology, Keele University, Keele, Staffordshire, UK.
Department of Otolaryngology, The Ohio State University, Wexner Medical Center, Columbus, Ohio, USA.
Infancy. 2022 Jul;27(4):720-735. doi: 10.1111/infa.12474. Epub 2022 May 7.
Congenital hearing loss offers a unique opportunity to examine the role of sound in cognitive, social, and linguistic development. Children with hearing loss demonstrate atypical performance across a range of general cognitive skills. For instance, research has shown that deaf school-age children underperform on visual statistical learning (VSL) tasks. However, the evidence for these deficits has been challenged, with mixed findings emerging in recent years. Here, we used a novel approach to examine VSL in the action domain early in development. We compared learning between deaf and hearing infants, prior to cochlear implantation (pre-CI), and a group of toddlers post implantation (post-CI). Findings revealed a significant difference between deaf and hearing infants pre-CI, with evidence for learning only in the hearing infants. However, there were no significant group differences between deaf and hearing toddlers post-CI, with both groups demonstrating learning. Further, VSL performance was positively correlated with language scores for the deaf toddlers, adding to the body of evidence suggesting that statistical learning is associated with language abilities. We discuss these findings in the context of previous evidence for group differences in VSL skills, and the role that auditory experiences play in infant cognitive development.
先天性听力损失为研究声音在认知、社会和语言发展中的作用提供了独特的机会。听力损失儿童在一系列一般认知技能上表现出异常。例如，研究表明，失聪的学龄儿童在视觉统计学习 (VSL) 任务上表现不佳。然而，这些缺陷的证据受到了挑战，近年来出现了混合的结果。在这里，我们使用一种新方法在发育早期研究动作领域的 VSL。我们比较了植入人工耳蜗前（pre-CI）的失聪和听力婴儿以及植入后（post-CI）的一组幼儿之间的学习情况。研究结果显示，pre-CI 时失聪和听力婴儿之间存在显著差异，只有听力婴儿有学习证据。然而，post-CI 时失聪和听力幼儿之间没有显著的组间差异，两组都表现出学习能力。此外，失聪幼儿的 VSL 表现与语言得分呈正相关，这进一步证明了统计学习与语言能力相关。我们将这些发现置于 VSL 技能组间差异的先前证据以及听觉体验在婴儿认知发展中的作用的背景下进行讨论。
