Vocal Turn-Taking in Families With Children With and Without Hearing Loss.
Maria V Kondaurova, Qi Zheng, Mark VanDam and 1 others
PMID 34619686WHAT IT FOUND
Children with cochlear implants in this sample had fewer conversational turns with adult female and adult male caregivers than children with hearing aids or normal hearing.
Turns with other children increased with age and were higher in families with siblings.
Key findings
01In this sample, children with cochlear implants had fewer conversational turns with adult female and adult male caregivers than children with hearing aids or normal hearing.
02Turns between the target child and other children increased with age and were more frequent in families with siblings.
03Child hearing status did not significantly affect the relative pattern of turns among family members.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The cochlear implant group had only 9 children and 28 recordings, so the group comparison is small. The cochlear implant children were older than the hearing aid and normal-hearing children, with mean ages 65.1 months, 31.5 months, and 29.7 months. Maternal education differed between groups, with the normal-hearing group mean 8.4 and the cochlear implant group mean 5.8. Paternal education differed between groups, with the normal-hearing group mean 8.3 and the hearing aid group mean 6.8. The sample was a convenience sample from two-parent, English-speaking households, mostly non-Hispanic white, so it may not represent other family structures or languages. LENA undercounted conversational turns compared with human coders, and it may confuse the target child voice with another child voice by 4 to 23%. The study did not track moment by moment which family members were near the child, and it did not identify whether the other child was a sibling or peer or collect that child's characteristics. The study measured turn counts only. The paper says future research should test whether turn-taking relates to child language outcomes.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the fewer turns in the cochlear implant group as proof that cochlear implants reduce conversation or that increasing turns will improve language. The study was observational, the cochlear implant group had 9 children and was older, and the paper says future research should test whether turn-taking relates to child language outcomes.