Rhyme Awareness in Children With Normal Hearing and Children With Cochlear Implants: An Exploratory Study

Phonological awareness is a critical component of phonological processing that predicts children’s literacy outcomes. Phonological awareness skills enable children to think about the sound structure of words and facilitates decoding and the analysis of words during spelling. Past research has shown...

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Main Authors: Linye Jing, Katrien Vermeire, Andrea Mangino, Christina Reuterskiöld
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2019-09-01
Series:Frontiers in Psychology
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02072/full
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author Linye Jing
Katrien Vermeire
Andrea Mangino
Christina Reuterskiöld
author_facet Linye Jing
Katrien Vermeire
Andrea Mangino
Christina Reuterskiöld
author_sort Linye Jing
collection DOAJ
description Phonological awareness is a critical component of phonological processing that predicts children’s literacy outcomes. Phonological awareness skills enable children to think about the sound structure of words and facilitates decoding and the analysis of words during spelling. Past research has shown that children’s vocabulary knowledge and working memory capacity are associated with their phonological awareness skills. Linguistic characteristics of words, such as phonological neighborhood density and orthography congruency have also been found to influence children’s performance in phonological awareness tasks. Literacy is a difficult area for deaf and hard of hearing children, who have poor phonological awareness skills. Although cochlear implantation (CI) has been found to improve these children’s speech and language outcomes, limited research has investigated phonological awareness in children with CI. Rhyme awareness is the first level of phonological awareness to develop in children with normal hearing (NH). The current study investigates whether rhyme awareness in children with NH (n = 15, median age = 5; 5, IQR = 11 ms) and a small group of children with CI (n = 6, median age = 6; 11.5, IQR = 3.75 ms) is associated with individual differences in vocabulary and working memory. Using a rhyme oddity task, well-controlled for perceptual similarity, we also explored whether children’s performance was associated with linguistic characteristics of the task items (e.g., rhyme neighborhood density, orthographic congruency). Results indicate that there is an association between vocabulary and working memory and performance in a rhyme awareness task in NH children. Only working memory was correlated with rhyme awareness performance in CI children. Linguistic characteristics of the task items, on the other hand, were not found to be associated with success. Implications of the results and future directions are discussed.
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spelling doaj.art-d612d454e3a844aca144c275a18e5ee22022-12-22T02:38:21ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Psychology1664-10782019-09-011010.3389/fpsyg.2019.02072468821Rhyme Awareness in Children With Normal Hearing and Children With Cochlear Implants: An Exploratory StudyLinye Jing0Katrien Vermeire1Andrea Mangino2Christina Reuterskiöld3Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders, New York University, New York, NY, United StatesDepartment of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Long Island University, Brooklyn, NY, United StatesLIJ Hearing and Speech Center, Cohen Children’s Medical Center, Northwell Health, New Hyde Park, NY, United StatesDepartment of Communicative Sciences and Disorders, New York University, New York, NY, United StatesPhonological awareness is a critical component of phonological processing that predicts children’s literacy outcomes. Phonological awareness skills enable children to think about the sound structure of words and facilitates decoding and the analysis of words during spelling. Past research has shown that children’s vocabulary knowledge and working memory capacity are associated with their phonological awareness skills. Linguistic characteristics of words, such as phonological neighborhood density and orthography congruency have also been found to influence children’s performance in phonological awareness tasks. Literacy is a difficult area for deaf and hard of hearing children, who have poor phonological awareness skills. Although cochlear implantation (CI) has been found to improve these children’s speech and language outcomes, limited research has investigated phonological awareness in children with CI. Rhyme awareness is the first level of phonological awareness to develop in children with normal hearing (NH). The current study investigates whether rhyme awareness in children with NH (n = 15, median age = 5; 5, IQR = 11 ms) and a small group of children with CI (n = 6, median age = 6; 11.5, IQR = 3.75 ms) is associated with individual differences in vocabulary and working memory. Using a rhyme oddity task, well-controlled for perceptual similarity, we also explored whether children’s performance was associated with linguistic characteristics of the task items (e.g., rhyme neighborhood density, orthographic congruency). Results indicate that there is an association between vocabulary and working memory and performance in a rhyme awareness task in NH children. Only working memory was correlated with rhyme awareness performance in CI children. Linguistic characteristics of the task items, on the other hand, were not found to be associated with success. Implications of the results and future directions are discussed.https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02072/fullrhyme awarenessneighborhood densitycochlear implantsvocabularyworking memory
spellingShingle Linye Jing
Katrien Vermeire
Andrea Mangino
Christina Reuterskiöld
Rhyme Awareness in Children With Normal Hearing and Children With Cochlear Implants: An Exploratory Study
Frontiers in Psychology
rhyme awareness
neighborhood density
cochlear implants
vocabulary
working memory
title Rhyme Awareness in Children With Normal Hearing and Children With Cochlear Implants: An Exploratory Study
title_full Rhyme Awareness in Children With Normal Hearing and Children With Cochlear Implants: An Exploratory Study
title_fullStr Rhyme Awareness in Children With Normal Hearing and Children With Cochlear Implants: An Exploratory Study
title_full_unstemmed Rhyme Awareness in Children With Normal Hearing and Children With Cochlear Implants: An Exploratory Study
title_short Rhyme Awareness in Children With Normal Hearing and Children With Cochlear Implants: An Exploratory Study
title_sort rhyme awareness in children with normal hearing and children with cochlear implants an exploratory study
topic rhyme awareness
neighborhood density
cochlear implants
vocabulary
working memory
url https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02072/full
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AT katrienvermeire rhymeawarenessinchildrenwithnormalhearingandchildrenwithcochlearimplantsanexploratorystudy
AT andreamangino rhymeawarenessinchildrenwithnormalhearingandchildrenwithcochlearimplantsanexploratorystudy
AT christinareuterskiold rhymeawarenessinchildrenwithnormalhearingandchildrenwithcochlearimplantsanexploratorystudy