The relationship between reading comprehension, working memory and language in children with cochlear implants

Working memory, language, and reading comprehension are strongly associated in children with severe and profound hearing impairment treated by cochlear implants (CI). In this study we explore this relationship in sixteen Swedish children with CI. We found that over 60% of the children with CI performed at the level of their hearing peers in a reading comprehension test. Demographic factors were not predictive of reading comprehension, but a complex working memory task was. Reading percentile was significantly correlated to the working memory test, but no other correlations between reading and cognitive/linguistic factors remained significant after age was factored out. Individual results from a comparison of the two best and the two poorest readers corroborate group results, confirming the important role of working memory for reading as measured by comprehension of words andmsentences in this group of children

Spoken and written narratives in Swedish children and adolescents with hearing impairment

Twenty 10- to 18-year-old children and adolescents with varying degrees of hearing impairment (HI) and hearing aids (HA), ranging from mild-moderate to severe, produced picture-elicited narratives in a spoken and written version. Their performance was compared to that of 63 normally hearing (NH) peers within the same age span. The participants with HI and NH showed similar patterns regarding intragroup correlations between corresponding measures of spoken and written narratives. However, the participants with HI had significantly less diverse language than the NH group. The participants with poorer hearing (higher best ear hearing level [BEHL]) produced spoken and written narratives comprising more content words and they also produced written narratives that were less lexically diverse than the participants with better hearing (lower BEHL). The difference as to lexical skills emphasizes the importance of focusing on these skills in the group of children with HI. However, the results give support for a quite optimistic view on the development of narration in children with HI with HA, at least for picture-elicited narratives

Narration and reading comprehension in Swedish children and adolescents with hearing impairment

The aim of the present thesis was to explore reading comprehension and narration in children and adolescents with different degrees of hearing impairment (HI). In Study I, reading comprehension was investigated in 16 children with cochlear implants (CI), aged 7-13 years. Over 60% of the investigated children performed at the level of their hearing peers. Reading comprehension was better than expected taking the participants poor phonological skills into consideration. The association between reading comprehension and working memory capacity was robust. Study II was a methodological study, where narrative writing (picture-elicited) was studied using keystroke-logging, which was found to be a valid method for children with typical language developing and NH of 10 years of age and above. The analyses of narratives from 27 children aged 8-12 years, showed several relations between the writing process and the writing product. In Study III, the process and the product in written narration was explored in 18 participants with CI, aged 11-19. When comparing their performance to that of participants with NH, the most prominent difference was that the children and adolescents with CI were less linguistically mature. This was illustrated by a much higher proportion of content words (less function words). Regarding older participants, although they wrote as fast, they used significantly more pause time than participants with NH. In study IV, spoken, as well as written narration was investigated in 20 participants with HI and HA, 10-18 years old. The main finding was that they were less lexically varied than participants with NH. Narration and reading comprehension are important skills for academic success and social inclusion. This thesis clearly indicates that many individuals with HI who are over the age of 10 years clearly lag behind their age peers in complex language activities

Process and product in writing-a methodological contribution to the assessment of written narratives in 8-12-year-old Swedish children using ScriptLog.

Twenty-seven children, with typical language development (TLD), 8-10 years old and 10-12 years old, were assessed with keystroke-logging in order to investigate their narrative writing. Measures of the writing process and the written product were used. One purpose was to explore how children produce written narratives in on-line production, and to relate the writing process to the written product. The results showed that those children who produced the final text faster, also wrote stories that comprised of more words. In the group of older children, children with better narrative ability used less pause time than those with worse ability, and the girls were faster writers than the boys. We believe that keystroke-logging gives valuable information for the assessment of young children's writing and that it is a potentially valid assessment tool for children from about 10 years of age