Cochlear Implants

1
Reading Comprehension after Cochlear
implantation The influence of morphosyntactic
skill on reading comprehension in children with
cochlear implants Anne van der Kant MSc CNS
Radboud University Nijmegen
Introduction Little is known about the reading
skills of deaf children in the Dutch language
area. According to research by Wauters (2006)
deaf children with hearing aids performed poorly
on reading comprehension. Results from Vermeulen
et al. (2007) showed that those with CI's
performed better than the former group, but still
lagged behind their normal hearing peers.
Decoding skill did not differ significantly from
normal hearing children and could therefore not
account for the large differences in reading
comprehension. The current study aims to
investigate other possible causes of the problems
deaf children show in reading comprehension. In
the first place it explores the role of
morphosyntax and working memory in the deviant
reading comprehension of Flemish deaf children
with cochlear implants. The second objective is
to show the level of reading comprehension among
Flemish children.
Cochlear Implants
A cochlear implant (CI) is an auditory prosthesis
that bypasses damaged hair cells in an individual
with sensory-neural hearing loss. The device
applies direct stimulation to the auditory nerve
by means of an electrode array inserted into the
cochlea. Although not all spectral information
of the acoustic signal is represented in a CI,
good results have been reported with respect to
the language acquisition of children with
CI's. Those that have been given a CI at an early
age, often in the first year of life, show the
largest progress (Schauwers et al. 2002).
Vocabulary (Vermeulen et al.)
Working Memory
Morphosyntax
Decoding Skill (Vermeulen et al.)
Language Comprehension
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Reading Comprehension
Relevance in Education
Simple View of Reading (Hoover Gough) (within
box)
Teachers in schools for the deaf as well as in
main-stream education are confronted with a
growing amount of children with cochlear
implants. When more is known about the origins of
the problems these children have in reading
comprehension, educational programs can
incorporate solutions to these problems in an
early stage.
Methods To assess reading comprehension, all of
the subjects completed a reading comprehension
test ('begrijpend leestest' by Aarnoutse, 1996).
This test exists of small texts with questions
about their content. Until now, the test data of
20 children have been received. The data of the
Flemish CI children will be compared to those of
the Dutch children with (data Vermeulen) and
without (data Wauters) CIs. This study gives an
extensive overview of the level of reading
comprehension of children that attend primary
schools in Flanders, as all but one schools of
the deaf in Flanders provide data. In total,
about 60 children that met the inclusion criteria
(hearing loss gt80dB and no additional deficits)
will take part in the study. Based on the
reading comprehension data, one group with high
and one with poor scores will be selected. These
groups will be contrasted on their working memory
capacity scores, including verbal and non-verbal
working memory, their morphosyntactic ability,
specifically comprehension of auditory presented
sentences and the amount to which these factors
influence each other. With these contrast groups
I aim to show which mechanisms contribute to poor
scores on reading comprehension in children with
cochlear implants.
The results of earlier studies in this field
(especially Wauters, 2006) have been the start of
educational changes that enables implanted
children who attend these schools now to reach a
higher level of reading comprehension. This, in
turn, gives them the possibility to use reading
as a tool to learn, which will help them in their
further education.
Hearing aids
Normal hearing

• Expected results
• Based on the literature and results that have
  been obtained in previous studies on reading
  comprehension in deaf children, the following
  results are expected
• Higher scores among the Flemish children than
  the Dutch as a result of early neonatal
  screening and implantation at early age.
• Higher scores among deaf children with cochlear
  implants than among deaf children who
  exclusively use hearing aids.
• A significant influence of morphosyntactic
  abilities and working memory capacity on the
  reading comprehension scores within the group of
  implanted children.

NH -1sd 1sd
CI users
Reading comprehension (Anneke Vermeulen)