Coputer based phonological intervention : Effects on phonological processing

• Children with mild to profound hearing impairment (HI) using cochlear implants (CI) and/or hearingaids (HA), and children with normal hearing (NH) participated in a phonological intervention study, bymeans of a computer‐based intervention program (Graphogame, Lyytinen et al., 2009). Children were 5,6 and 7 years of age. Thirty‐two of the children used CI and/or HA. 16 children with NH served as thecontrol group. The main design was a quasi‐experimental 3 x 3 design. Each test session was separatedin time with four weeks. All children were asked to practice 10 minutes per day at home supported bytheir parents, with an intervention program primarily developed to enhance phonemic differentiation.Results showed that the children with HI displayed a heterogeneous pattern of results, specifically withrespect to their performance on the phonological tasks. Approximately 20 percent performed within therange of NH children; these were all children with HA except one child with CI/HA. Children with CIdisplayed considerable difficulty with phonological working memory whereas children with HAshowed less knowledge in letter tasks. Intervention revealed positive effects on accuracy of phonemegraphemecorrespondence for all children and a significant positive change on phonological processingskills for children with weak initial phonological skills. Enhanced phoneme‐grapheme connections maybuild associations between the phonological lexicon and the sub‐lexical phonological representations,thereby improving underlying skills essential for word learning and the development of literacy. Implicationsof this are discussed within theoretical models of phonological and lexical processing (Goswami,2000; Ramus, 2001).

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