Performance of children with hearing loss on an audiovisual version of a nonword repetition task

Sarah Al-Salim, Mary Pat Moeller, Karla K. McGregor

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

8 Scopus citations

Abstract

Purpose: The aims of this study were to (a) determine if a high-quality adaptation of an audiovisual nonword repetition task can be completed by children with wide-ranging hearing abilities and to (b) examine whether performance on that task is sensitive to child demographics, hearing status, language, working memory, and executive function abilities. Method: An audiovisual version of a nonword repetition task was adapted and administered to 100 school-aged children grouped by hearing status: 35 with normal hearing, 22 with mild bilateral hearing loss, 17 with unilateral hearing loss, and 26 cochlear implant users. Participants also completed measures of vocabulary, working memory, and executive function. A generalized linear mixed-effects model was used to analyze performance on the nonword repetition task. Results: All children were able to complete the nonword repetition task. Children with unilateral hearing loss and children with cochlear implants repeated nonwords with less accuracy than normal-hearing peers. After adjusting for the influence of vocabulary and working memory, main effects were found for syllable length and hearing status, but no interaction effect was observed. Conclusions: The audiovisual nonword repetition task captured individual differences in the performance of children with wide-ranging hearing abilities. The task could act as a useful tool to aid in identifying children with unilateral or mild bilateral hearing loss who have language impairments beyond those imposed by the hearing loss.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)42-54
Number of pages13
JournalLanguage, speech, and hearing services in schools
Volume51
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 2020

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Language and Linguistics
  • Linguistics and Language
  • Speech and Hearing

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