Are prosodic effects on sentence comprehension dependent on age?

PURPOSE: to investigate prosodic boundary effects on the comprehension of attachment ambiguities in Brazilian Portuguese and to test two hypotheses relying on the notion of boundary strength: the absolute boundary hypothesis (ABH) and the relative boundary hypothesis (RBH). Manipulations of prosodic structure influence how listeners interpret syntactically ambiguous sentences. However, the role of prosody in spoken language comprehension of sentences has received limited attention in languages other than English, particularly from a developmental perspective. METHODS: Twenty-three adults and 15 children participated in a computerized sentence comprehension task involving syntactically ambiguous sentences. Each sentence was recorded in eight different prosodic forms with acoustic manipulations of F0, duration and pause varying the boundary size to reflect predictions of the ABH and RBH. RESULTS: Children and adults differed in how prosody influenced their syntactic processing and children were significantly slower than adults. Results indicated that interpretation of sentences varied according to their prosodic forms. CONCLUSION: Neither the ABH or the RBH explained how children and adults who speak Brazilian Portuguese use prosodic boundaries to disambiguate sentences. There is evidence that the way prosodic boundaries influence disambiguation varies cross-linguistically.

The effect of sentence length on question comprehension in children with cochlear implants.

OBJECTIVES: The present study investigated the comprehension of subject and object who and which questions in children with cochlear implants (CI). METHODS: Growth Curve Analysis (GCA) was used to compare eye gaze fixations and gaze patterns to the appropriate subject or object nouns within a four-picture array between 16 children with CI and 31 children with typical hearing (aged 7;0-12;0) on wh-questions with and without added adjectives to increase length. Offline accuracy was also compared. RESULTS: Findings indicated children with typical hearing exhibited more fixations to the target noun across all conditions, supporting higher comprehension accuracy. Both groups of children demonstrated more fixations to the target noun in object questions and questions without added length. Patterns of eye movement were significantly different between groups, suggesting different patterns of eye gaze across the array before fixation on the target noun. Children with CI exhibited fewer fixations, slower speed to fixation, and differences in gaze patterns that may imply the presence of processing limitations. Error analyses also suggested that children with CI frequently fixated on a picture similar to the target noun. CONCLUSIONS: Results indicate children with CI comprehend questions more slowly than their hearing peers, which may be related to limitations in working memory.

Are prosodic effects on sentence comprehension dependent on age? / Os efeitos prosódicos na compreensão de frases variam de acordo com a idade?

ABSTRACT Purpose to investigate prosodic boundary effects on the comprehension of attachment ambiguities in Brazilian Portuguese and to test two hypotheses relying on the notion of boundary strength: the absolute boundary hypothesis (ABH) and the relative boundary hypothesis (RBH). Manipulations of prosodic structure influence how listeners interpret syntactically ambiguous sentences. However, the role of prosody in spoken language comprehension of sentences has received limited attention in languages other than English, particularly from a developmental perspective. Methods Twenty-three adults and 15 children participated in a computerized sentence comprehension task involving syntactically ambiguous sentences. Each sentence was recorded in eight different prosodic forms with acoustic manipulations of F0, duration and pause varying the boundary size to reflect predictions of the ABH and RBH. Results Children and adults differed in how prosody influenced their syntactic processing and children were significantly slower than adults. Results indicated that interpretation of sentences varied according to their prosodic forms. Conclusion Neither the ABH or the RBH explained how children and adults who speak Brazilian Portuguese use prosodic boundaries to disambiguate sentences. There is evidence that the way prosodic boundaries influence disambiguation varies cross-linguistically.

RESUMO Objetivo investigar os efeitos de fronteiras prosódicas na compreensão de ambiguidades sintáticas no português brasileiro além de testar duas hipóteses baseadas na noção de intensidade de fronteira: a hipótese de fronteira absoluta (ABH) e a hipótese de fronteira relativa (RBH). Manipulações da estrutura prosódica influenciam como os ouvintes interpretam frases sintaticamente ambíguas. No entanto, o papel da prosódia na compreensão da linguagem oral tem recebido atenção limitada em línguas além do inglês, particularmente do ponto de vista do desenvolvimento. Método Vinte e três adultos e 15 crianças participaram de uma tarefa computadorizada de compreensão de frases envolvendo frases sintaticamente ambíguas. Cada frase foi gravada em oito formas prosódicas diferentes com manipulações acústicas de F0, duração, e pausa, variando o tamanho da fronteira prosódica de modo a transparecer as previsões da ABH e RBH. Resultados Crianças e adultos diferiram em como a prosódia influenciou o processamento sintático; as crianças foram significativamente mais lentas que os adultos. Os resultados indicaram que a interpretação das frases variou de acordo com suas formas prosódicas. Conclusão Nenhuma das hipóteses (ABH ou RBH) explica como crianças e adultos falantes do Português brasileiro utilizam as fronteiras prosódicas para desambiguar frases. Há evidências de que a maneira com a qual os limites prosódicos influenciam a desambiguação de frases varia entre os idiomas.

Developmental Language Disorder as Syntactic Prediction Impairment.

We provide evidence that children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) are impaired in predictive syntactic processing. In the current study, children listened passively to auditorily-presented sentences, where the critical condition included an unexpected "filled gap" in the direct object position of the relative clause verb. A filled gap is illustrated by the underlined phrase in "The zebra that the hippo kissed the camel on the nose…", rather than the expected "the zebra that the hippo kissed [e] on the nose", where [e] denotes the gap. Brain responses to the filled gap were compared to a control condition using adverb-relative clauses with identical substrings: "The weekend that the hippo kissed the camel on the nose [e]…". Here, the same noun phrase is not unexpected because the adverb gap occurs later in the structure. We hypothesized that a filled gap would elicit a prediction error brain signal in the form of an early anterior negativity, as we have previously observed in adults. We found an early (bilateral) anterior negativity to the filled gap in a control group of children with Typical Development (TD), but the children with DLD exhibited no brain response to the filled gap during the same early time window. This suggests that children with DLD fail to predict that a relativized object should correspond to an empty position after the relative clause verb, suggesting an impairment in predictive processing. We discuss how this lack of a prediction error signal can interact with language acquisition and result in DLD.

Relative Clause Sentence Comprehension by Japanese-Speaking Children With and Without Specific Language Impairment.

Purpose This study investigated the auditory comprehension of Japanese sentences including relative clauses (RCs) by 52 Japanese-speaking children with typical development (TD) and 16 children with specific language impairment (SLI). Method A picture-pointing task measured RC and main clause (MC) comprehension for object and subject relatives in sentences with varying lengths. The accuracy of RC only, MC only, and combined comprehension (RC and MC) was analyzed with linear mixed-effects (logistic) models to examine accuracy and the effects of the deep gap-filler distance (structural complexity), the surface linear distance, and sentence length for the two participant groups. Six language tests and two working memory tests were administered to determine language and working memory status. A factor analysis grouped them into two factors that were examined as predictors of comprehension performance. Results Initial models indicated that children with SLI performed more poorly than their peers with TD. Working memory abilities predicted the comprehension of subject and object relative sentences, but language abilities other than a general measure of sentence comprehension were only limited predictors. In a series of pairwise comparisons, children with SLI did not exhibit comprehension facilitation for RC sentences with lower structural complexity, nor did they exhibit comprehension facilitation when the linear distance between the gap and the filler was shorter, perhaps because of their overall lower performance. Children with TD made more errors on sentences with higher structural complexity but did not exhibit any linear distance effects. Neither group exhibited effects of noun phrase or sentence length. Conclusions Japanese-speaking children with TD exhibited negative comprehension effects of increased deep structure complexity, but not of linear surface distance or sentence noun phrase length. The children with SLI face challenges in comprehending both subject and object relative sentences compared to their typically developing peers. Their poorer working memory abilities are the primary factor that constrains their performance.

Case marking and word order in Greek heritage children.

This study examined the linguistic and individual-level factors that render case marking a vulnerable domain in English-dominant Greek heritage children. We also investigated whether heritage language (HL) children can use case-marking cues to interpret (non-)canonical sentences in Greek similarly to their monolingual peers. A group of six- to twelve-year-old Greek heritage children in New York City and a control group of age-matched monolingual children living in Greece participated in a production and a picture verification task targeting case marking and (non-)canonical word order in Greek. HL children produced syncretic inflectional errors, also found in preschool monolingual children. In the comprehension task, HL children showed variable performance on the non-canonical OVS but ceiling performance on the SVO conditions, which suggests influence from English. Linguistic factors such as case transparency affected comprehension, whereas child-level factors such as proficiency and degree of (early) use of Greek influenced performance on both modalities.

Language Ability and the Familiar Talker Advantage: Generalizing to Unfamiliar Talkers Is What Matters.

Purpose Previous studies with children and adults have demonstrated a familiar talker advantage-better word recognition for familiar talkers. The goal of the current study was to test whether this phenomenon is modulated by a child's language ability. Method Sixty children with a range of language ability were trained to learn the voices of 3 foreign-accented, German-English bilingual talkers and received feedback about their performance. Both before and after this talker voice training, children completed a spoken word recognition task in which they heard consonant-vowel-consonant words mixed with noise that were spoken by the 3 familiarized talkers and by 3 unfamiliar German-English bilinguals. Results Two findings emerged from this study: First, children with both higher and lower language ability performed similarly on the familiarized talkers. Second, children with higher language scores performed similarly on both the familiarized and unfamiliar talkers, whereas children with lower language scores performed worse on the unfamiliar talkers compared to familiar talkers, suggesting an inability to generalize to novel, unfamiliar talkers who spoke with a similar accent. Discussion Together, these findings indicate that children with higher language scores are able to generalize knowledge about foreign-accented talkers to help spoken word recognition for novel talkers with the same accent. In contrast, children with lower language skills did not exhibit the same magnitude of generalization. This lack of generalization to similar talkers may mean that children with lower language skills are at a disadvantage in spoken language tasks because they are unable to process speech as well when listening to unfamiliar talkers.

Novel word learning at 21 months predicts receptive vocabulary outcomes in later childhood.

Several aspects of early language skills, including parent-report measures of vocabulary, phoneme discrimination, speech segmentation, and speed of lexical access predict later childhood language outcomes. To date, no studies have examined the long-term predictive validity of novel word learning. We examined whether individual differences in novel word learning at 21 months predict later childhood receptive vocabulary outcomes rather than generalized cognitive abilities. Twenty-eight 21-month-olds were taught novel words using a modified version of the Intermodal Preferential Looking Paradigm. Seventeen children (range 7-10 years) returned to participate in a longitudinal follow-up. Novel word learning in infancy uniquely accounted for 22% of the variance in childhood receptive vocabulary but did not predict later childhood visuospatial ability or non-verbal IQ. These results suggest that the ability to associate novel sound patterns to novel objects, an index of the process of word learning, may be especially important for long-term language mastery.

Prosodic Boundary Effects on Syntactic Disambiguation in Children With Cochlear Implants.

Purpose: This study investigated prosodic boundary effects on the comprehension of attachment ambiguities in children with cochlear implants (CIs) and normal hearing (NH) and tested the absolute boundary hypothesis and the relative boundary hypothesis. Processing speed was also investigated. Method: Fifteen children with NH and 13 children with CIs (ages 8-12 years) who are monolingual speakers of Brazilian Portuguese participated in a computerized comprehension task with sentences containing prepositional phrase attachment ambiguity and manipulations of prosodic boundaries. Results: Children with NH and children with CIs differed in how they used prosodic forms to disambiguate sentences. Children in both groups provided responses consistent with half of the predictions of the relative boundary hypothesis. The absolute boundary hypothesis did not characterize the syntactic disambiguation of children with CIs. Processing speed was similar in both groups. Conclusions: Children with CIs do not use prosodic information to disambiguate sentences or to facilitate comprehension of unambiguous sentences similarly to children with NH. The results suggest that cross-linguistic differences may interact with syntactic disambiguation. Prosodic contrasts that affect sentence comprehension need to be addressed directly in intervention with children with CIs.

Processing Binding Relations in Specific Language Impairment.

Purpose: This sentence processing experiment examined the abilities of children with specific language impairment (SLI) and children with typical language development (TD) to establish relations between pronouns or reflexives and their antecedents in real time. Method: Twenty-two children with SLI and 24 age-matched children with TD (7;3-10;11 [years;months]) participated in a cross-modal picture priming experiment to determine whether they selectively activated the correct referent at the pronoun or reflexive in sentences. Triplets of auditory sentences, identical except for the presence of a pronoun, a reflexive, or a noun phrase along with a picture probe were used. Results: The children with TD were slightly more accurate in their animacy judgments of pictures, but the groups exhibited the same reaction time (RT) pattern. Both groups were slower for sentences with pronouns than with reflexives or noun phrases. The children with SLI had longer RTs than their peers with TD. Conclusions: Children with SLI activated only the appropriate antecedent at the pronoun or reflexive, reflecting intact core knowledge of binding as was true for their TD peers. The overall slower RT for children with SLI suggests that any deficit may be the result of processing deficits, perhaps attributable to interference effects.

From Sensory Perception to Lexical-Semantic Processing: An ERP Study in Non-Verbal Children with Autism.

This study examines electrocortical activity associated with visual and auditory sensory perception and lexical-semantic processing in nonverbal (NV) or minimally-verbal (MV) children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Currently, there is no agreement on whether these children comprehend incoming linguistic information and whether their perception is comparable to that of typically developing children. Event-related potentials (ERPs) of 10 NV/MV children with ASD and 10 neurotypical children were recorded during a picture-word matching paradigm. Atypical ERP responses were evident at all levels of processing in children with ASD. Basic perceptual processing was delayed in both visual and auditory domains but overall was similar in amplitude to typically-developing children. However, significant differences between groups were found at the lexical-semantic level, suggesting more atypical higher-order processes. The results suggest that although basic perception is relatively preserved in NV/MV children with ASD, higher levels of processing, including lexical- semantic functions, are impaired. The use of passive ERP paradigms that do not require active participant response shows significant potential for assessment of non-compliant populations such as NV/MV children with ASD.

Perception of Small Frequency Differences in Children with Auditory Processing Disorder or Specific Language Impairment.

BACKGROUND: Frequency discrimination is often impaired in children developing language atypically. However, findings in the detection of small frequency changes in these children are conflicting. Previous studies on children's auditory perceptual abilities usually involved establishing differential sensitivity thresholds in sample populations who were not tested for auditory deficits. To date, there are no data comparing suprathreshold frequency discrimination ability in children tested for both auditory processing and language skills. PURPOSE: : This study examined the perception of small frequency differences (∆ƒ) in children with auditory processing disorder (APD) and/or specific language impairment (SLI). The aim was to determine whether children with APD and children with SLI showed differences in their behavioral responses to frequency changes. Results were expected to identify different degrees of impairment and shed some light on the auditory perceptual overlap between pediatric APD and SLI. RESEARCH DESIGN: An experimental group design using a two-alternative forced-choice procedure was used to determine frequency discrimination ability for three magnitudes of ∆ƒ from the 1000-Hz base frequency. STUDY SAMPLE: Thirty children between 10 years of age and 12 years, 11 months of age: 17 children with APD and/or SLI, and 13 typically developing (TD) peers participated. The clinical groups included four children with APD only, four children with SLI only, and nine children with both APD and SLI. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS: Behavioral data collected using headphone delivery were analyzed using the sensitivity index d', calculated for three ∆ƒ was 2%, 5%, and 15% of the base frequency or 20, 50, and 150 Hz. Correlations between the dependent variable d' and the independent variables measuring auditory processing and language skills were also obtained. A stepwise regression analysis was then performed. RESULTS: TD children and children with APD and/or SLI differed in the detection of small-tone ∆ƒ. In addition, APD or SLI status affected behavioral results differently. Comparisons between auditory processing test scores or language test scores and the sensitivity index d' showed different strengths of correlation based on the magnitudes of the ∆ƒ. Auditory processing scores showed stronger correlation to the sensitivity index d' for the small ∆ƒ, while language scores showed stronger correlation to the sensitivity index d' for the large ∆ƒ. CONCLUSION: Although children with APD and/or SLI have difficulty with behavioral frequency discrimination, this difficulty may stem from two different levels: a basic auditory level for children with APD and a higher language processing level for children with SLI; the frequency discrimination performance seemed to be affected by the labeling demands of the same versus different frequency discrimination task for the children with SLI.

Does Working Memory Enhance or Interfere With Speech Fluency in Adults Who Do and Do Not Stutter? Evidence From a Dual-Task Paradigm.

PURPOSE: The present study examined whether engaging working memory in a secondary task benefits speech fluency. Effects of dual-task conditions on speech fluency, rate, and errors were examined with respect to predictions derived from three related theoretical accounts of disfluencies. METHOD: Nineteen adults who stutter and twenty adults who do not stutter participated in the study. All participants completed 2 baseline tasks: a continuous-speaking task and a working-memory (WM) task involving manipulations of domain, load, and interstimulus interval. In the dual-task portion of the experiment, participants simultaneously performed the speaking task with each unique combination of WM conditions. RESULTS: All speakers showed similar fluency benefits and decrements in WM accuracy as a result of dual-task conditions. Fluency effects were specific to atypical forms of disfluency and were comparable across WM-task manipulations. Changes in fluency were accompanied by reductions in speaking rate but not by corresponding changes in overt errors. CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggest that WM contributes to disfluencies regardless of stuttering status and that engaging WM resources while speaking enhances fluency. Further research is needed to verify the cognitive mechanism involved in this effect and to determine how these findings can best inform clinical intervention.

Control of Auditory Attention in Children With Specific Language Impairment.

PURPOSE: Children with specific language impairment (SLI) appear to demonstrate deficits in attention and its control. Selective attention involves the cognitive control of attention directed toward a relevant stimulus and simultaneous inhibition of attention toward irrelevant stimuli. The current study examined attention control during a cross-modal word recognition task. METHOD: Twenty participants with SLI (ages 9-12 years) and 20 age-matched peers with typical language development (TLD) listened to words through headphones and were instructed to attend to the words in 1 ear while ignoring the words in the other ear. They were simultaneously presented with pictures and asked to make a lexical decision about whether the pictures and auditory words were the same or different. Accuracy and reaction time were measured in 5 conditions, in which the stimulus in the unattended channel was manipulated. RESULTS: The groups performed with similar accuracy. Compared with their peers with TLD, children with SLI had slower reaction times overall and different within-group patterns of performance by condition. CONCLUSIONS: Children with TLD showed efficient inhibitory control in conditions that required active suppression of competing stimuli. Participants with SLI had difficulty exerting control over their auditory attention in all conditions, with particular difficulty inhibiting distractors of all types.

Syntactic comprehension and working memory in children with specific language impairment, autism or Down syndrome.

This study examined syntactic assignment for predicates and reflexives as well as working memory effects in the sentence comprehension of children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI), Down syndrome (DS), high functioning Autism (HFA) and Typical Language Development (TLD). Fifty-seven children (35 boys and 22 girls) performed a computerised picture-selection sentence comprehension task. Predicate attachment and reflexive antecedent assignment (with working memory manipulations) were investigated. The results showed that SLI, HFA and DS children exhibited poorer overall performance than TLD children. Children with SLI exhibited similar performance to the DS and HFA children only when working memory demands were higher. We conclude that children with SLI, HFA and DS differ from children with TLD in their comprehension of predicate and reflexive structures where the knowledge of syntactic assignment is required. Working memory manipulation had different effects on syntactic comprehension depending on language disorder. Intelligence was not an explanatory factor for the differences observed in performance.

Picture naming and verbal fluency in children with cochlear implants.

PURPOSE: In the present study, the authors examined lexical naming in children with cochlear implants (CIs). The goal was to determine whether children with CIs have deficits in lexical access and organization as revealed through reaction time in picture-naming and verbal fluency (VF) experiments. METHOD: Children with CIs (n = 20, ages 7-10) were compared with 20 children with normal hearing (NH) matched for age and nonverbal IQ. Lexical abilities were examined using two naming tasks: a timed picture-naming task and a phonological and semantic VF naming task. Picture naming taps into lexical access capabilities and the VF task elucidates lexical organization. RESULTS: No group differences were found between children with CIs and children with NH on the timed picture-naming task. Children with CIs generated significantly fewer words than the children with NH on the VF tasks. Larger group differences were found for the phonological VF task compared with the semantic VF task. CONCLUSIONS: Limited early linguistic and auditory experiences may affect lexical representations and organization (lexical-semantic connections) in school-age children with hearing loss who use CIs. Further analyses and studies should continue to examine these underlying linguistic deficits. The present results suggest a need to emphasize not only increasing the size of children's vocabularies during therapy, but also expanding and increasing the semantic and phonological richness of their lexical representations.

Can children with SLI detect cognitive conflict? Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence.

PURPOSE: This study examined whether children with specific language impairment (SLI) are deficient in detecting cognitive conflict between competing response tendencies in a GO/No-GO task. METHOD: Twelve children with SLI (ages 10-12), 22 children with typical language development matched group-wise on age (TLD-A), and 16 younger children with TLD (ages 8-9) matched group-wise on language skills (TLD-L) were tested using a behavioral GO/No-GO paradigm with simultaneous collection of event-related potentials. The N2 component was used as a neural index of the ability to detect conflict between GO and No-GO response tendencies. RESULTS: Hit rates did not differentiate the 3 groups. The TLD-L children demonstrated the highest false-alarm rates. The N2 component was attenuated and showed delayed divergence of GO and No-GO amplitudes in SLI relative to TLD-A children in response to stimuli presented at various probability levels. The N2 effect in children with SLI resembled that of children with TLD who were approximately 3 years younger. CONCLUSIONS: School-age children with SLI exhibit a maturational lag in detecting conflict between competing response alternatives. Deficient conflict detection may in turn hinder these children's ability to resolve conflict among semantic representations that are activated during language processing.

Gray-white matter and cerebrospinal fluid volume differences in children with Specific Language Impairment and/or Reading Disability.

We studied gray-white matter and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) alterations that may be critical for language, through an optimized voxel-based morphometry evaluation in children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI), compared to Typical Language Development (TLD). Ten children with SLI (8;5-10;9) and 14 children with TLD (8;2-11;8) participated. They received a comprehensive language and reading test battery. We also analyzed a subgroup of six children with SLI+RD (Reading Disability). Brain images from 3-Tesla MRIs were analyzed with intelligence, age, gender, and total intracranial volume as covariates. Children with SLI or SLI+RD exhibited a significant lower overall gray matter volume than children with TLD. Particularly, children with SLI showed a significantly lower volume of gray matter compared to children with TLD in the right postcentral parietal gyrus (BA4), and left and right medial occipital gyri (BA19). The group with SLI also exhibited a significantly greater volume of gray matter in the right superior occipital gyrus (BA19), which may reflect a brain reorganization to compensate for their lower volumes at medial occipital gyri. Children with SLI+RD, compared to children with TLD, showed a significantly lower volume of: (a) gray matter in the right postcentral parietal gyrus; and (b) white matter in the right inferior longitudinal fasciculus (RILF), which interconnects the temporal and occipital lobes. Children with TLD exhibited a significantly lower CSF volume than children with SLI and children with SLI+RD respectively, who had somewhat smaller volumes of gray matter allowing for more CSF volume. The significant lower gray matter volume at the right postcentral parietal gyrus and greater cerebrospinal fluid volume may prove to be unique markers for SLI. We discuss the association of poor knowledge/visual representations and language input to brain development. Our comorbid study showed that a significant lower volume of white matter in the right inferior longitudinal fasciculus may be unique to children with SLI and Reading Disability. It was significantly associated to reading comprehension of sentences and receptive language composite z-score, especially receptive vocabulary and oral comprehension of stories.

Semantic organization in children with cochlear implants: computational analysis of verbal fluency.

PURPOSE: Cochlear implants (CIs) enable children with severe and profound hearing impairments to perceive the sensation of sound sufficiently to permit oral language acquisition. So far, studies have focused mainly on technological improvements and general outcomes of implantation for speech perception and spoken language development. This study quantitatively explored the organization of the semantic networks of children with CIs in comparison to those of age-matched normal hearing (NH) peers. METHOD: Twenty seven children with CIs and twenty seven age- and IQ-matched NH children ages 7-10 were tested on a timed animal verbal fluency task (Name as many animals as you can). The responses were analyzed using correlation and network methodologies. The structure of the animal category semantic network for both groups were extracted and compared. RESULTS: Children with CIs appeared to have a less-developed semantic network structure compared to age-matched NH peers. The average shortest path length (ASPL) and the network diameter measures were larger for the NH group compared to the CIs group. This difference was consistent for the analysis of networks derived from animal names generated by each group [sample-matched correlation networks (SMCN)] and for the networks derived from the common animal names generated by both groups [word-matched correlation networks (WMCN)]. CONCLUSIONS: The main difference between the semantic networks of children with CIs and NH lies in the network structure. The semantic network of children with CIs is under-developed compared to the semantic network of the age-matched NH children. We discuss the practical and clinical implications of our findings.