Spoken Sentence Complexity and Grammar Use in Children with CIs

Abstract

This study investigated if the language profiles of prelingually deaf children with bilateral cochlear implants (CIs) and children with typical hearing (TH) matched on their quantitative score on clinical spoken expressive language tasks differed in terms of sentence complexity, sentence length, and severity of grammatical errors. No significant differences were found between the groups in terms of (1) proportion of simple, conjoined, and complex sentences; (2) mean length of utterance based on words and syllables; and (3) proportion of local and global grammatical errors. The results indicate that the quantitative scores on the clinical spoken expressive language tasks are related to similar spoken language profiles in children with CIs and children with TH. These findings suggest that these tests can be used for meaningful comparisons of expressive spoken language skills. However, more studies are needed on the real-life expressive language skills of children with CIs, as clinical tests often rely on one specific modality (in this study: spoken language) and might therefore not accurately represent the language skills of the children.