Poster #53 - Verb lexicon, but not noun lexicon, predicts grammatical outcomes in Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants

• In Event: Poster Session 03

Abstract

Access to auditory-phonetic information is fundamental for learning spoken language (Werker, 2018). Children with prelingual, profound hearing loss who receive cochlear implants (CIs) do not receive robust auditory input for spoken language until their implants are switched on, which typically does not happen until they are 12 months of age or older. In addition, the auditory input that children with CIs receive is a degraded electrical signal (Kral et al., 2016). Given the early auditory deprivation and the degraded auditory input, children with CIs tend to demonstrate lower language skills than their peers with matched chronological age (Geers et al., 2016).

Among the components of language, grammatical development seems to be particularly challenging for children with CIs. For example, Guo and Spencer (2017) found that 50% of English-speaking children who had five years of CI experience produced lower grammatical accuracy than average five-year-olds with typical hearing in a narrative task. Effective grammatical intervention could potentially improve grammatical outcomes for children with CIs. To this end, Hadley (2016) developed a sentence-focused framework to promote grammatical learning in young children by recognizing early lexical development, especially verb vocabulary, as a critical step for later grammatical development. The role of verbs was emphasized because verbs were associated with the acquisition of a variety of grammatical structures (e.g., word order, verb tense). One prediction of the sentence-focused framework was that verb lexicon size would be a stronger predictor than noun lexicon size in accounting for later grammatical outcomes. The prediction was supported by empirical evidence from English-speaking (Hadley, 2016) and Mandarin-speaking (Liu et al., submitted) children with typical hearing. The present investigation extended the sentence-focused framework to Mandarin-speaking children with CIs by examining the extent to which early noun and verb lexicon sizes accounted for later grammatical outcomes in these children.

Participants were 49 Mandarin-speaking children with CIs who received cochlear implantation before 30 months age. Parents were asked to endorse the words that their children were able to understand only or understand and say at 12 months after CI activation using the form of Early Vocabulary Inventory – Infants (EVI; Hao et al., 2008). Receptive and expressive lexicon sizes were computed for nouns and verbs from the EVI. Parents also endorsed the grammatical structures that their children were able to say at 24 months after CI activation using the form of Mandarin-Chinese Communicative Development Inventory – Taiwan (MCDI-T; Liu & Tsao, 2010). Grammatical complexity scores were computed from the MCDI-T.

Correlation analyses showed that receptive and expressive noun and verb lexicon sizes at 12 months after CI activation were all correlated with grammatical complexity scores at 24 months after CI activation (rs>0.55, ps<0.001). Simultaneous regression analyses further revealed that receptive and expressive verb lexicon sizes, but not receptive or expressive noun lexicon size, significantly predicted grammatical complexity scores. The finding suggests that the sentence-focused framework can be applied to Mandarin-speaking children with CIs. Emphasizing the role of verb in early intervention has the potential to enhance grammatical outcomes in these children.

Authors

• Lei Xu, Shandong Provincial ENT Hospital

• Jianfen Luo, Shandong Provincial ENT Hospital

• Min Wang, Shandong Provincial ENT Hospital

• Jinmin Li, Shandong Provincial ENT Hospital

• Xianqi Liu, Shandong Provincial ENT Hospital

• Dianzhao Xie, Shandong Provincial ENT Hospital

• Linda J Spencer, Rocky Mountain University of Health Professions

• Ling-Yu Guo, State University of New York at Buffalo (SUNY Buffalo)
  Presenting Author