RESUMEN
Background: Phonological awareness skills include three levels syllabic, intra- syllabic and phonemic awareness, and have major influence on speech and reading and writing abilities. Thus, the assessment of children abilities in these levels is important. This study aimed to investigate and compare the performance of normal and cochlear implanted children in two types of phonological awareness tests
Method and Materials: The population of this cross-sectional study eighteen normal and eighteen cochlear implanted children 5-5.5 years from the cochlear implant centers in three hospitals in Tehran and the Tehran University dormitory married, respectively. Thereafter, their phonological awareness skills were evaluated in auditory-visual modality [2010] and visual modality [2009]. Finally, the data were analyzed using Mann Whithney and Spearman non-parametric tests in the spss [16.0] software
Results: Cochlear implanted children, when compared with normal children, had lower scores in both Visual - Auditory and Auditory phonological awareness tests [p< 0.001]. Average cochlear implantation group in both [Visual - Auditory] and [Auditory] tests was: 16.17 [6.1] and 6.72 [5.9], respectively and in normal children group was 40.5 [3.9] and 77.76 [13.5]. Both groups had better performances in the first test than the later one [p< 0.001]. There was also a correlation between children's scores on the two tests; but in the cochlear implanted children, this correlation was lower [r= 0.582] than the normal ones [r= 0.785]
Conclusion: The visual - auditory test for use of the images, for assessment of phonological awareness skills in children with cochlear implants are more suitable and hearing test for the assessment of phonological awareness skills in a more sophisticated level, is useful
RESUMEN
Due to defects of auditory feedback, children with hearing loss have inappropriate speech intonation. Consistently, results of previous studies have shown that cochlear implanted children have some difficulties in their intonation. Intonation shows the type of the sentence which can be statement or question sentences. The purpose of this study was comparison of speech intonation in cochlear-implanted children and normal hearing children. The present study was performed on 25 cochlear-implanted children and 50 normal hearing children. Different pictures were shown to the subjects and they said statement and question sentences. All sentences were heard by eight speech therapists and perceptually judged. Using praat software mean base frequency and pitch alterations were measured. In cochlear-implanted group, mean speech base frequency was higher and mean pitch alteration was lower than the control group. Mean experts' scores in cochlear-implanted group were lower than the control group. Differences in all three variables were statistically significant [p<0.05]. There was a significant direct correlation between duration of time that the children had cochlear implant and perceptual judgment scores [p<0.05]. According to the results, cochlear implant prosthesis has limited efficacy in improving speech intonation; although their ability to produce speech intonation improves by increasing duration of the time that children have cochlear implant. Thus speech therapists should consider intervening on speech intonation in treatment program of cochlear-implanted children.