Segmental and suprasegmental properties in nonword repetition : An explorative study of the associations with nonword decoding in children with normal hearing and children with bilateral cochlear implants

• The present study explored nonword repetition (NWR) and nonword decoding in normalhearing (NH) children and in children with cochlear implants (CIs). Participants were 11 children with bilateral CIs, 5:0-7:11 years (M = 6.5 yrs.), and 11 NH children, individually age-matched to the children with CIs. The purpose was twofold; to thoroughly describe aspects of repetition and decoding of novel words and to study possible associations between them. All children were assessed after having practiced with a computer-assisted reading intervention with a phonics approach during four weeks. Results showed that NH children outperformed children with CIs on the majority of aspects of NWR. The analysis of syllable length in NWR revealed that children with CIs made more syllable omissions than did the NH children, and predominantly in prestressed positions. Additionally, the consonant cluster analysis showed significantly more consonant omissions and substitutions in children with CIs suggesting that reaching fine- grained levels of phonological processing was particularly difficult for these children. No significant difference was found for decoding accuracy between the groups, as measured by percent nonwords and percent phonemes correctly decoded, but differences were observed regarding error patterns. Further, phoneme deletions and lexicalizing of nonwords occurred more often in children with CIs than in those with NH. The correlation analysis revealed that the ability to repeat consonant clusters in NWR had the strongest associations to nonword decoding in both groups.

Ämnesord

MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Hälsovetenskap -- Annan hälsovetenskap (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Health Sciences -- Other Health Sciences (hsv//eng)

MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Annan medicin och hälsovetenskap -- Övrig annan medicin och hälsovetenskap (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Other Medical and Health Sciences -- Other Medical and Health Sciences not elsewhere specified (hsv//eng)

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur -- Jämförande språkvetenskap och allmän lingvistik (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature -- General Language Studies and Linguistics (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Nonword repetition

nonword decoding

children

normal hearing

cochlear implants

Publikations- och innehållstyp

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