The everyday speech environments of preschoolers with and without cochlear implants.
Margaret Cychosz, Jan R Edwards, Benjamin Munson and 3 others
PMID 38362892WHAT IT FOUND
Preschoolers with cochlear implants hear similar amounts of speech and engage in as many conversational turns as their hearing peers.
However, unlike hearing children, their language environment does not grow richer with age, and their own vocal output is less responsive to caregiver interaction.
Key findings
01Children with cochlear implants received similar amounts of adult speech input and engaged in similar numbers of conversational turns as children with typical hearing.
02For children with typical hearing, speech input became more consistent and abundant with age, but no such age-related growth in input was seen for children with cochlear implants.
03Conversational turns were less predictive of a child's vocal productivity for children with cochlear implants compared to their hearing peers.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study was cross-sectional, meaning it compared different children at one point in time rather than tracking the same children as they grew, which limits conclusions about developmental trajectories. Participants were predominantly from white, middle-to-upper-class families, so findings may not generalize to all populations. Data was collected on a single day, which may not represent typical daily interactions if exceptional events occurred. The study did not have access to device usage logs, so it is unclear if children were wearing their implants for the entire recording period.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that children with cochlear implants are receiving less language input or engaging in fewer conversations than their hearing peers. The study found these quantities were similar; the key difference is that their language environment does not expand with age in the same way, and their vocal output is less responsive to that input.