Delayed Lexical Access and Cascading Effects on Spreading Semantic Activation During Spoken Word Recognition in Children With Hearing Aids and Cochlear Implants: Evidence From Eye-Tracking.

The sample was narrow: all children were native English speakers, had no other diagnosed disabilities affecting language or cognition, and children with hearing loss had onset before 18 months and relied mainly on spoken language. The hearing-loss groups came from a socioeconomically advantaged sample: of 42 children with hearing aids or cochlear implants with parent education data, all but two had a mother who attended college, and 29 had a mother with at least a bachelor's degree. Twenty-two children with cochlear implants participated, but 19 were retained after exclusions. The task used single words in a quiet, easy eye-tracking test. It does not show how these children process multi-word sentences or classroom discourse. The groups were matched on age but not language ability; children with cochlear implants had lower receptive vocabulary scores than the other groups. It is unclear whether the slower word-recognition pattern is a deficit or an adaptive strategy. The study did not test whether word recognition training improves listening; the authors call for further research on this.

No author conflict-of-interest statement appears in the supplied text. The publication types list non-U.S. government and NIH extramural research support.

Do not conclude that children with hearing aids or cochlear implants have a separate word-meaning deficit. The paper found their slower looks to related pictures were explained by slower word access, not by hearing status itself.