Susan Nittrouer|Amanda Caldwell|Christopher Holloman
Measuring what matters: Effectively predicting language and literacy in children with cochlear implants
The Ohio State University|The Ohio State University|The Ohio State University
evaluate well various language measures typically used young children receive cochlear implants predict language literacy skills enter schoolsubjects 50 children completed kindergarten 6 7 years age previously participated longitudinal study 12 48 months age 27 children severetoprofound hearing loss wore cochlear implants 8 moderate hearing loss wore hearing aids 15 normal hearing latent variable languageliteracy skill constructed scores six kinds measures 1 language comprehension 2 expressive vocabulary 3 phonological awareness 4 literacy 5 narrative skill 6 processing speed five kinds language measures obtained sixmonth intervals 12 48 months age used predictor variables correlational analyses 1 language comprehension 2 expressive vocabulary 3 syntactic structure productive speech 4 form 5 function language used language samplesoutcomes quantified much variance kindergarten languageliteracy performance explained predictor variable earlier age testing comprehension measures consistently predicted roughly 2550 percent variance kindergarten languageliteracy performance effective predictors 24 months age vocabulary syntactic complexity strong predictors roughly 36 months age amount speech produced language samples number answers parental queries explained moderate amounts variance performance 24 months age number manual gestures nonspeech vocalizations produced language samples explained little variance 24 months age negatively correlated kindergarten performance number imitations produced language samples 24 months age explained 10 percent variance kindergarten performance otherwise correlated negatively correlated kindergarten outcomesbefore 24 months age best predictor later language success language comprehension general measures index childs cognitive processing language sensitive predictors schoolage language abilities