Conversational Skills in Children With

1
Conversational Skills in Children With Without
Cochlear ImplantsFara E. Ditkowsky, M.A., C.F.
Katrina Fulcher M.A., C.F.

• DISCUSSION
• Children with (CI) employ more invitation
  questions than follow-up questions. Invitation
  questions encourage the conversational partner to
  share information on a previously established
  topic, whereas a follow-up question allows for
  elaboration.
• Children with CI also employed more repair
  questions, meant to request a repetition or
  clarification of a previously stated utterance.
• Several instances of overlapping speech were
  observed between the children with cochlear
  implants, while no evidence of overlapping speech
  was seen in the typically developing dyad.
• LIMITATIONS,
• CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS
• FUTURE RESEARCH
• Limitations of this research study include
  small dyad number, short conversational sample
  length. A less naturalistic conversation task
  construction was facilitated.
• Clinical implications of this research study
  focus on conversational flexibility via
  therapeutic/diagnostic implications. For children
  who have deficits in conversational ability,
  learning how to be flexible communication
  partners is crucial.
• Future research in the area of conversational
  skills, especially regarding cochlear implant
  recipients, should focus on conversational skills
  in naturalistic environments.
• In addition, it would be beneficial to conduct a
  similar study using longer conversational samples
  with extended utterance production to analyze
  more variables and provide a more holistic view
  of conversation.

BACKGROUND

• Pragmatic language skills, including
  conversational skills, support childrens ability
  to establish and maintain acceptance into peer
  groups (Schley Snow, 1992).
• Pragmatics and conversational skills of children
  with cochlear implants have received limited
  empirical examination (Lloyd at al., 2007).
• Analyses of conversations between adults and
  children with cochlear implants (CI) reveal that
  children
• may be less likely to understand when a
  conversational breakdown has occurred (Toe,
  2008),
• are more likely to provide inadequate or
  unrelated information within a conversation
  (Elfenbein, Hardin-Jones, Davis, 1994),
• tend to produce more comments than questions,
• are more likely to initiate turns by behaviorally
  touching (McKirdy Bank, 1982), and may rely on
  simple responses (Toe et al, 2007).
• Whereas these differences have been documented in
  adult to child conversations (Blum-Kulka,
  Huck-Taglicht, Anvi, 2004), much less is known
  about the conversational skills of children with
  CI in peer-to-peer interactions.

RESULTS
Typically Developing Conversational Data Analysis
Cochlear Implant Conversational Data Analysis

• PURPOSE
• To examine peer-to-peer conversational skills in
  school-aged children with CI and compare these
  skills to the interactions of typically
  developing school-age children.
• Specific aims included
• To determine the ratio of comments to questions
  that exhibit contingency,
• To analyze the types of questions produced within
  the interaction,
• To quantify the number of interruptions and topic
  shifts.

Chart 2 Data analysis (averaged) for the
children with cochlear implants conversational
dyad.
Chart 1 Data analysis (averaged) for the
typically developing children conversational
dyad.
EXPERIMENTAL TASKS

• A conversational topic picture card task was
  created to elicit a minimally structured small
  talk conversation. Topics included birthday,
  favorite television show/movie, favorite holiday,
  family, favorite toy, friends, bullying, and bee
  sting.
• A snack task was created to elicit a negotiation
  situation meant to facilitate a longer, more
  naturalistic utterance production

PARTICIPANTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Typical Cochlear Implants
(n2)
(n2)
Age (Year Months) Gender (Boys/Girls)
Appreciation is extended to Dr. Geralyn Timler,
Dr. Jeff Higginbotham, Dr. Kristi Buckley,
Gretchen Swartzenberg and the rest of the staff
at the University at Buffalo for their guidance
and knowledgeable input. A special thank you is
extended to the children and their families that
participated in this study.
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The children with cochlear implants were
bilaterally implanted between 10-60. The
following standardized measures were obtained to
determine that each child had sufficient speech
and language skills to be an appropriate
candidate for this study Test of Narrative
Language (TNL Gillam Pearson, 2004), the
Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test - Second Edition
(KBIT-2 Kaufman, A. Kaufman N., 2006),
Childrens Communication Checklist-2 (CCC-2
Bishop, 2006) and The Screening Instrument for
Targeting Educational Risk (S.I.F.T.E.R.
Anderson, 1989). Scores were required to fall
within normal limits
CONTACT INFORMATION
Chart 4 Overlapping speech produced by both
participant populations. Numbers presented
represent the frequency of occurrences.
Chart 3 Comparison of the varied question
functions between the typically developing
children and children with cochlear implants.
Numbers presented represent the frequency of
occurrences.
References and a handout copy of this poster
are available from Fara Ditkowsky at
fditkowsky_at_aol.com or Katrina Fulcher at
katrina.fulcher_at_gmail.com. Please contact Fara
and/or Katrina with any further questions and
comments.
Utterances were transcribed using the Systematic
Analysis of Language Transcription (S.A.L.T.
Miller Chapman, 1986), and organized by subject
code. Reliability measures were conducted for
both general transcription and coding procedures.