Effect of age at cochlear implantation and at exposure to Cued Speech on literacy skills in deaf children.

The aim of this study was to investigate how age at cochlear implantation (CI) and age at exposure to Cued Speech (CS, Manual system that resolves the ambiguity inherent lipreading) could impact literacy skills in deaf children. Ninety deaf children fitted with CI (early vs late) and exposed to CS (early vs late) from primary schools (from Grade 2 to Grade 5) took part in this study. Five literacy skills were assessed: phonological skills through phoneme deletion, reading (decoding and sentence comprehension), word spelling and vocabulary. The results showed that both age at CI and age at first exposure to CS had some influence on literacy skills but there was no interaction between these factors. This implies that the positive effects of age at CI, especially on all literacy skills in the younger children, were not strengthened by age at exposure to CS.

The development of word recognition, sentence comprehension, word spelling, and vocabulary in children with deafness: a longitudinal study.

BACKGROUND: Only a small number of longitudinal studies have been conducted to assess the literacy skills of children with hearing impairment. The results of these studies are inconsistent with regard to the importance of phonology in reading acquisition as is the case in studies with hearing children. Colin, Magnan, Ecalle, and Leybaert (2007) revealed the important role of early phonological skills and the contribution of the factor of age of exposure to Cued Speech (CS: a manual system intended to resolve the ambiguities inherent to speechreading) to subsequent reading acquisition (from kindergarten to first grade) in children with deafness. The aim of the present paper is twofold: (1) to confirm the role of early exposure to CS in the development of the linguistic skills necessary in order to learn reading and writing in second grade; (2) to reveal the possible existence of common factors other than CS that may influence literacy performances and explain the inter-individual difference within groups of children with hearing impairment. METHOD: Eighteen 6-year-old hearing-impaired and 18 hearing children of the same chronological age were tested from kindergarten to second grade. The children with deafness had either been exposed to CS at an early age, at home and before kindergarten (early-CS group), or had first been exposed to it when they entered kindergarten (late-CS group) or first grade (beginner-CS group). Children were given implicit and explicit phonological tasks, silent reading tasks (word recognition and sentence comprehension), word spelling, and vocabulary tasks. RESULTS: Children in the early-CS group outperformed those of the late-CS and beginner-CS groups in phonological tasks from first grade to second grade. They became better readers and better spellers than those from the late-CS group and the beginner-CS group. Their performances did not differ from those of hearing children in any of the tasks except for the receptive vocabulary test. Thus early exposure to CS seems to permit the development of linguistic skills necessary in order to learn reading and writing. The possible contribution of other factors to the acquisition of literacy skills by children with hearing impairment will be discussed.

[Deficits in reading acquisition in primary school: cognitive, social and behavioral factors studied in a sample of 1062 children]. / Troubles d'acquisition de la lecture en cours élémentaire : facteurs cognitifs, sociaux et comportementaux dans un échantillon de 1062 enfants.

BACKGROUND: Reading impairment is the major learning disability in children. While research on illiteracy has mainly been conducted from a sociological perspective, research on dyslexia has typically been studied from a cognitive-linguistic perspective. Studies that jointly investigate sociological, behavioral and cognitive factors in predicting reading outcome are rare and limited to English-speaking populations. The goal of the present study was to screen second grade children with reading impairment in French urban elementary schools and to pin down the factors that explain the various facets of reading failure and success. METHODS: A total of 1062 children from 20 different schools in the city of Paris participated in the study. Different aspects of reading were assessed individually for children with a suspected impairment in reading acquisition. Subsequently, 131 poor readers and 50 typically developing readers were matched for sex, age, and school. For these children, medical, cognitive, behavioral and individual socioeconomic data were obtained. Group differences were examined and multiple regression analyses were conducted to examine how much variance in reading was explained by the various variables. RESULTS: The prevalence of poor reading skills in grade 2 was highly influenced by neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES) (ranging from 3.3% in high SES to 20.5% in low SES areas). Among the SES variables, employment of the father was a significant predictor of poor reading. Among the cognitive variables, phonological awareness and rapid naming were the most significant factors, much more than verbal or nonverbal intelligence. Among the behavioral variables, attention was an important factor but not externalized symptoms. Multiple regression analyses showed that reading outcome was best predicted by phonological awareness skills and attention deficits. CONCLUSION: The majority of children with reading disability come from low SES areas. As in the English literature, the most robust predictor for reading impairment is phonological awareness, even when SES is taken into account. In addition, attention deficits seemed to aggravate reading impairments for children with weak phonological awareness skills. Successful early prevention should focus on reinforcing phonological awareness, recoding and attention skills.

[Study of causal factors of reading impairment in a sample of 1062 7 to 8-year-old children]. / Etude des facteurs liés aux difficultés d'apprentissage de la lecture. A partir d'un échantillon de 1062 enfants de seconde année d'école élémentaire.

OBJECTIVE: From an original large sample of 1062 7 to 8-year-old children, reading skills were assessed and found to be highly linked with socioeconomic status (SES). The purpose of the present study was to further determine underlying medical, sociocultural, cognitive and behavioural factors explaining the diversity of reading skills and the influence of SES. METHOD: Individual testing among low-SES children identified 100 poor readers, 50 typical readers and 31 children with intermediate reading scores. All 3 groups underwent a thorough assessment, including a medical evaluation, a full cognitive battery, a structured parental interview and behavioural questionnaire. Logistic regression was used to demonstrate the variables predicting reading score outcome. RESULTS: None of the medical factors studied was statistically related to reading scores. Due to the methodology buffering the impact of SES sociocultural variables, such as parental levels of education, parental occupation, as well as familial income were weak, but statistically significant predictors. The strongest variables were phonological abilities and symptoms of attention disorders. In a final regression model, phonological awareness, level of mother's education and attention explained the differences in reading skills. CONCLUSIONS: These results, which are unique in France, are similar to existing data in the literature. They support the need to conceptualize an early screening programme to detect reading difficulties and to promote an intervention based on phonological processing and decoding in low-SES environments.

[Prevalence of reading disabilities in early elementary school: impact of socioeconomic environment on reading development in 3 different educational zones]. / Prévalence des troubles d'apprentissages du langage écrit en début de scolarité : l'impact du milieu socioéconomique dans 3 zones d'éducations distinctes.

OBJECTIVE: Socioeconomic status (SES) has a known influence on academic achievement. Most studies, however, were conducted in English-speaking countries. Because recent cross-linguistic studies suggest that reading English is much harder to learn than reading other languages, an epidemiological study was conducted in French investigating the impact of socioeconomic background on early reading development. DESIGN: One thousand and twenty second-grade children (476 girls and 544 boys) from 20 different schools participated in the study. Approximately 1/3 of the children lived and were schooled in a high SES area, 1/3 in an intermediate SES area, and one final third in a very low SES area. Assessment of reading, writing and mathematical skills was conducted initially in small groups. Children with suspected learning difficulties were further tested individually. Forty-two children of equivalent age who repeated the first grade received similar individual testing. RESULTS: Average reading scores were in accordance with chronological age, without gender differences. Children from low SES schools had academic performances significantly lower than their peers. Boys exhibited superior arithmetic skills than girls. A significant reading delay was observed in 12.7% of children. The prevalence of poor reading was highly correlated with the area of schooling, varying from 3.3% in the high SES area to 24.2% in low SES area. CONCLUSION: The high rate of children from our sample with a significant delay in reading depended on general socioeconomic environment. An understanding of the origin of such differences is mandatory for defining and coordinating preventive actions and appropriate interventions.

Relation between deaf children's phonological skills in kindergarten and word recognition performance in first grade.

BACKGROUND: The aim of the present study was twofold: 1) to determine whether phonological skills measured in deaf prereaders predict their later phonological and reading skills after one year of reading instruction as is the case for hearing children; 2) to examine whether the age of exposure to a fully specified phonological input such as Cued Speech may explain the inter-individual differences observed in deaf children's phonological and word recognition levels. METHOD: Twenty-one 6-year-old deaf prereaders and 21 hearing children of the same chronological age performed two phonological tasks (rhyme decision and generation tasks); they were re-assessed 12 months later and presented with other phonological tasks (rhyme decision and common unit identification tasks) and a written word choice test. RESULTS: Phonological skills measured before learning to read predicted the written word recognition score the following year, both for hearing and for deaf participants. Age of onset of exposure to Cued Speech was also a strong predictor of phonological and written word recognition scores in beginning deaf readers. CONCLUSIONS: The evidence broadly supports the idea of a capacity for acquiring phonological skills in deaf children. Deaf children who are able to develop an implicitly structured phonological knowledge before learning to read will be better readers when this knowledge becomes explicit under the pressure of reading instruction.

[Neuropsychic manifestations of loaiasis. A clinical case of potomania]. / Manifestations neuro-psychiques de la loase. A propos d'un cas de potomanie

The authors report a case of polyurodipsic syndrome in the course of a loasis. The patient recovered after a carbamazide treatment. The authors discuss the neuro-psychic symptoms in filarioses and their induction mode.