Department of Sense Organs, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy.
BrainSigns Srl, Rome, Italy.
Eur Arch Otorhinolaryngol. 2023 Jan;280(1):115-124. doi: 10.1007/s00405-022-07463-y. Epub 2022 Jul 13.
Auditory selective attention (ASA) is crucial to focus on significant auditory stimuli without being distracted by irrelevant auditory signals and plays an important role in language development. The present study aimed to investigate the unique contribution of ASA to the linguistic levels achieved by a group of cochlear implanted (CI) children.
Thirty-four CI children with a median age of 10.05 years were tested using both the "Batteria per la Valutazione dell'Attenzione Uditiva e della Memoria di Lavoro Fonologica nell'età evolutiva-VAUM-ELF" to assess their ASA skills, and two Italian standardized tests to measure lexical and morphosyntactic skills. A regression analysis, including demographic and audiological variables, was conducted to assess the unique contribution of ASA to language skills.
The percentages of CI children with adequate ASA performances ranged from 50 to 29.4%. Bilateral CI children performed better than their monolateral peers. ASA skills contributed significantly to linguistic skills, accounting alone for the 25% of the observed variance.
The present findings are clinically relevant as they highlight the importance to assess ASA skills as early as possible, reflecting their important role in language development. Using simple clinical tools, ASA skills could be studied at early developmental stages. This may provide additional information to outcomes from traditional auditory tests and may allow us to implement specific training programs that could positively contribute to the development of neural mechanisms of ASA and, consequently, induce improvements in language skills.
听觉选择性注意（ASA）对于关注重要的听觉刺激而不受无关听觉信号干扰至关重要，在语言发展中起着重要作用。本研究旨在探讨一组人工耳蜗植入（CI）儿童的 ASA 对其达到的语言水平的独特贡献。
对 34 名年龄中位数为 10.05 岁的 CI 儿童进行“Batteria per la Valutazione dell'Attenzione Uditiva e della Memoria di Lavoro Fonologica nell'età evolutiva-VAUM-ELF”测试，以评估其 ASA 技能，以及两项意大利标准化测试，以衡量词汇和形态句法技能。进行回归分析，包括人口统计学和听力学变量，以评估 ASA 对语言技能的独特贡献。
具有足够 ASA 表现的 CI 儿童百分比范围为 50%至 29.4%。双侧 CI 儿童的表现优于单侧 CI 儿童。ASA 技能对语言技能有显著贡献，单独占观察到的变异的 25%。
本研究结果具有临床意义，因为它们强调了尽早评估 ASA 技能的重要性，反映了它们在语言发展中的重要作用。使用简单的临床工具，可以在早期发育阶段研究 ASA 技能。这可能提供传统听觉测试结果之外的更多信息，并可能使我们能够实施特定的培训计划，这些计划可能会对 ASA 的神经机制发展产生积极影响，并因此导致语言技能的提高。
