The effect of modern standard arabic orthography on speech production by Arab children with hearing loss

Arabic phoneme-grapheme correspondence by non-native, deaf children with cochlear implants and normal hearing children

OBJECTIVE

This study aimed to compare the error patterns of Arabic phoneme-grapheme correspondence by a group of Malay children with cochlear implants (CIs) and normal hearing (NH) and the effects of the visual graphical features of Arabic graphemes (no-dot, single-dot, and multiple-dots) on the phoneme-grapheme correspondence.

METHODS

Participants were matched for hearing age (Mean, M = 7 ± 1.03 years) and duration of exposure to Arabic sounds (M = 2.7 ± 1.2 years). All 28 Arabic phonemes were presented through a loudspeaker and participants pointed to the graphemes associated with the presented phonemes.

RESULTS

A total of 336 and 616 tokens were collected for six children with CI and 11 NH children for each task, i.e., phonemes repetition and phoneme-grapheme correspondence. Both groups found it easier to repeat phonemes than the phoneme-grapheme correspondence. The children with CIs showed more confusion ([ظ, ز, ذ, ض, خ, ب, ه, س, ع, & ث] >10% correct scores) in phoneme-grapheme correspondence than the NH children ([ظ:14%] and [ث: 27%]). There was a significant interaction (p = 0.001) among the three visual graphical features and hearing status (CI and NH).

CONCLUSION

Our results infer that non-native Malay children with CIs and NH use different strategies to process the Arabic graphemes' visual features for phoneme-grapheme correspondence.

Assistive Hearing Technology for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Spoken Language Learners

Radical advancements in hearing technology in the last 30 years have offered some deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children the adequate auditory access necessary to acquire spoken language with high-quality early intervention. However, meaningful achievement gaps in reading and spoken language persist despite the engineering marvel of modern hearing aids and cochlear implants. Moreover, there is enormous unexplained variability in spoken language and literacy outcomes. Aspects of signal processing in both hearing aids and cochlear implants are discussed as they relate to spoken language outcomes in preschool and school-age children. In suggesting areas for future research, a case is made for not only expanding the search for mechanisms of influence on outcomes outside of traditional device- and child-related factors, but also for framing the search within Biopsychosocial systems theories. This theoretical approach incorporates systems of risk factors across many levels, as well as the bidirectional and complex ways in which factors influence each other. The combination of sophisticated hearing technology and a fuller understanding of the complex environmental and biological factors that shape development will help maximize spoken language outcomes in DHH children and contribute to laying the groundwork for successful literacy and academic development.

Auditory, visual, and auditory-visual perceptions of emotions by young children with hearing loss versus children with normal hearing

PURPOSE

This study aimed to investigate the effect of hearing loss (HL) on emotion-perception ability among young children with and without HL.

METHOD

A total of 26 children 4.0-6.6 years of age with prelingual sensory-neural HL ranging from moderate to profound and 14 children with normal hearing (NH) participated. They were asked to identify happiness, anger, sadness, and fear expressed by an actress when uttering the same neutral nonsense sentence. Their auditory, visual, and auditory-visual perceptions of the emotional content were assessed.

RESULTS

The accuracy of emotion perception among children with HL was lower than that of the NH children in all 3 conditions: auditory, visual, and auditory-visual. Perception through the combined auditory-visual mode significantly surpassed the auditory or visual modes alone in both groups, indicating that children with HL utilized the auditory information for emotion perception. No significant differences in perception emerged according to degree of HL. In addition, children with profound HL and cochlear implants did not perform differently from children with less severe HL who used hearing aids.

CONCLUSION

The relatively high accuracy of emotion perception by children with HL may be explained by their intensive rehabilitation, which emphasizes suprasegmental and paralinguistic aspects of verbal communication.

The perception of Arabic and Japanese short and long vowels by native speakers of Arabic, Japanese, and Persian

This study examines the perception of short and long vowels in Arabic and Japanese by three groups of listeners differing in their first languages (L1): Arabic, Japanese, and Persian. While Persian uses the same alphabet as Arabic and Iranian students learn Arabic in school, the two languages are typologically unrelated. Further, unlike Arabic or Japanese, vowel length may no longer be contrastive in modern Persian. In this study, a question of interest was whether Persian listeners' foreign language learning experience or Japanese listeners' L1 phonological experience might help them to accurately process short and long vowels in Arabic. In Experiment 1, Arabic and Japanese listeners were more accurate than Persian listeners in discriminating vowel length contrasts in their own L1 only. In Experiment 2, Arabic and Japanese listeners were more accurate than Persian listeners in identifying the length categories in the "other" unknown language as well as in their own L1. The difference in the listeners' perceptual performance between the two experiments supports the view that long-term L1 representations may be invoked to a greater extent in the identification than discrimination test. The present results highlight the importance of selecting the appropriate test for assessing cross-language speech perception.

Pragmatic abilities of children with hearing loss using cochlear implants or hearing AIDS compared to hearing children

This study characterized the profile of pragmatic abilities among 24 children with hearing loss (HL) aged 6.3-9.4 years, 13 using hearing aids (HAs) and 11 using cochlear implants (CIs), in comparison to those of 13 hearing children with similar chronological and language ages. All the children with HL used spoken language, attended regular schools, and received communication therapy twice a week. They had no disabilities other than the HL. We assessed pragmatic abilities using the pragmatic protocol of C. A. Prutting & D. M. Kirchner (1987. A clinical appraisal of the pragmatic aspects of language. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 52, 105-119), which includes verbal, nonverbal, and paralinguistic aspects. Findings showed that children with HL used varied pragmatic functions but revealed more incidents of inappropriate use of the different abilities, compared to hearing children. Intergroup differences were significant only for verbal parameters. No differences emerged between children who used CIs vs. HAs. It seems that the CI group had the same pragmatic abilities as severe HA children. The different or less effective pragmatic abilities of children with HL may be explained by less flexible use of language structures, difficulties in theory of mind, difficulties in auditory perception of spoken language, and less exposure to varied pragmatic situations and strategies. Results indicated the need to incorporate pragmatic communication abilities into rehabilitation programs.