Investigating Use of a Parent Report Tool to Measure Vocabulary Development in Deaf Greek-speaking Children with Cochlear Implants

Objective: There are very few measures of language development in spoken Greek that can be used with young deaf children. This study investigated the use of Cyprus Lexical List (CYLEX), a receptive and expressive vocabulary assessment based on parent report that has recently been adapted to Standard Greek, to measure the vocabulary development of deaf Greek-speaking children with cochlear implants. Design: A Standard Greek version of CYLEX was used to collect data on receptive and expressive vocabulary development from parents of thirteen deaf children with cochlear implants aged between 21 and 71 months. These data were compared with data collected previously from typically developing hearing Greek-speaking children. Results: Use of the test by parents of deaf children was found to be reliable. No correlation was found between children's vocabulary scores and chronological age. A positive correlation was however found between children's post-implant age and expressive vocabulary. The vocabulary skills of implanted children with a mean post-implant age of 20 months were not significantly different from those of typically developing hearing children of similar chronological age. Conclusion: CYLEX is a reliable and useful tool for exploring vocabulary development with this clinical group. Findings confirm the results of other studies in indicating that the vocabulary size of implanted pre-school-aged deaf children is related to the amount of time that children have used their implant, rather than chronological age

Hydrotherapy (Project Hydriades)

Natural resources are being used for the maintenance of health. According to the Law 3498/2006 of the Greek Parliament the natural health spas must be validated for their therapeutic properties. The Association of Municipalities and Communities of Health Springs of Greece signed a contract with the Research Committee of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, in order to conduct the research programme: ‘Study for the documentation of the therapeutic properties of the thermomineral waters’. The main aim of the project is: (1) the study of biological and therapeutic parameters of the natural health sources, (2) the identification of the indications and contraindications of hydrotherapy. Aims parallel to the main ones have been also set

variPianoâ„¢: Visualizing Musical Diversity with a Differential Tuning Mobile Interface

In this paper the framework of Computer Music interfaces is convolved within the context of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) to produce metaphors and paradigms that engulf differential tunings within adaptable mobile device screens. A presentation of the basic concepts involved in the Computer Music world prevails the discussion on the evaluation criteria for Computer Music virtual instruments and interfaces. New criteria are introduced, like knowledge representation of musical data and alternate musical interfaces materialization. A survey of various systems, based on the previously mentioned criteria is committed

Protophone classification of speech in implanted toddlers using acoustic analyses of their suprasegmental features

Aims: (a) To study the structure of protophones of spontaneous speech of two implanted children and classify them via acoustical analysis of their suprasegmental features; (b) to track a developmental order of infant vocalizations. Material and Methods: The spontaneous productions of two Greek implanted children (ages: 1:10–2:7, post-implant ages: 0:0–0:11) were examined. Over a span of six months an extensive record of protophones was transcribed via the IPA. Duration and pitch contour were analyzed via PRAAT. Utterance characteristics were analyzed in relation to a) children’s age b) post-implant age. Results: Certain developmental classification schemes emerged via the multi-level phonological analysis. The structure of protophones depended upon implantation age since the younger, earlyimplanted child showed more complex patterns. Consonant-vowel sequences were established by the post-implant age of six months. Conclusions: The analysis of protophones can serve as a prognostic indicator for the detection of other disabilities in implanted infants/toddler

Sonority's Effect as a Surface Cue on Lexical Speech Perception of Children with Cochlear Implants

OBJECTIVES: Sonority is the relative perceptual prominence/loudness of speech sounds of the same length, stress, and pitch. Children with cochlear implants (CIs), with restored audibility and relatively intact temporal processing, are expected to benefit from the perceptual prominence cues of highly sonorous sounds. Sonority also influences lexical access through the sonority-sequencing principle (SSP), a grammatical phonotactic rule, which facilitates the recognition and segmentation of syllables within speech. The more nonsonorous the onset of a syllable is, the larger is the degree of sonority rise to the nucleus, and the more optimal the SSP. Children with CIs may experience hindered or delayed development of the language-learning rule SSP, as a result of their deprived/degraded auditory experience. The purpose of the study was to explore sonority's role in speech perception and lexical access of prelingually deafened children with CIs. DESIGN: A case-control study with 15 children with CIs, 25 normal-hearing children (NHC), and 50 normal-hearing adults was conducted, using a lexical identification task of novel, nonreal CV-CV words taught via fast mapping. The CV-CV words were constructed according to four sonority conditions, entailing syllables with sonorous onsets/less optimal SSP (SS) and nonsonorous onsets/optimal SSP (NS) in all combinations, that is, SS-SS, SS-NS, NS-SS, and NS-NS. Outcome measures were accuracy and reaction times (RTs). A subgroup analysis of 12 children with CIs pair matched to 12 NHC on hearing age aimed to study the effect of oral-language exposure period on the sonority-related performance. RESULTS: The children groups showed similar accuracy performance, overall and across all the sonority conditions. However, within-group comparisons showed that the children with CIs scored more accurately on the SS-SS condition relative to the NS-NS and NS-SS conditions, while the NHC performed equally well across all conditions. Additionally, adult-comparable accuracy performance was achieved by the children with CIs only on the SS-SS condition, as opposed to NS-SS, SS-NS, and SS-SS conditions for NHC. Accuracy analysis of the subgroups of children matched in hearing age showed similar results. Overall longer RTs were recorded by the children with CIs on the sonority-treated lexical task, specifically on the SS-SS condition compared with age-matched controls. However, the subgroup analysis showed that both groups of children did not differ on RTs. CONCLUSIONS: Children with CIs performed better in lexical tasks relying on the sonority perceptual prominence cues, as in SS-SS condition, than on SSP initial relying conditions as NS-NS and NS-SS. Template-driven word learning, an early word-learning strategy, appears to play a role in the lexical access of children with CIs whether matched in hearing age or not. The SS-SS condition acts as a preferred word template. The longer RTs brought about by the highly accurate SS-SS condition in children with CIs is possibly because listening becomes more effortful. The lack of RTs difference between the children groups when matched on hearing age points out the importance of oral-language exposure period as a key factor in developing the auditory processing skills.status: publishe