title: Is age at implant the only factor that counts? The influence of working memory on lexical and grammatical development in children with cochlear implants.
abstract: In this study, we explored the influence of time factors (age at implant, time with cochlear implant and age), complex working memory and phonological short-term memory on lexical and grammatical development in congenitally deaf children with cochlear implants. Fifteen children (aged 5 years 4 months to 11 years 5 months) were examined with the use of several linguistic and cognitive measures after a minimum of 18 months of implant use. Phonological short-term memory was assessed with non-word repetition, where the percentage of correctly repeated consonants and vowels was counted. For the assessment of lexical acquisition. a novel word learning task was administered. Receptive and expressive grammar was tested. Our results corroborate earlier findings on the influence of phonological short-term memory on novel word learning. The percentage of vowels correctly produced in non-word repetition was more important in this group than age at implant, not only for novel word learning. but also for receptive and expressive grammar.
authors.affiliation: Department of Logopedics, Lund University Hospital, Lund, Sweden. ursula.willstedt-svensson@logopedi.lu.se
authors.forename: Ursula
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Willstedt-Svensson
authors.forename: Anders
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Löfqvist
authors.forename: Bengt
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Almqvist
authors.forename: Birgitta
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Sahlén
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003054:Cochlear Implants; D003071:Cognition; D000013:Congenital Abnormalities; D003638:Deafness / Q000151:congenital / Q000628:therapy*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008037:Linguistics; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology; D010700:Phonetics; D012044:Regression Analysis; D013065:Speech Intelligibility; D013997:Time Factors; D016896:Treatment Outcome