Lexical and semantic ability in groups of children with cochlear implants,language impairment and autism spectrum disorder

Objective

Lexical-semantic ability was investigated among children aged 6–9 years with cochlear implants (CI) and compared to clinical groups of children with language impairment (LI) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) as well as to age-matched children with normal hearing (NH). In addition, the influence of age at implantation on lexical-semantic ability was investigated among children with CI.

Methods

97 children divided into four groups participated, CI (n = 34), LI (n = 12), ASD (n = 12), and NH (n = 39). A battery of tests, including picture naming, receptive vocabulary and knowledge of semantic features, was used for assessment. A semantic response analysis of the erroneous responses on the picture-naming test was also performed.

Results

The group of children with CI exhibited a naming ability comparable to that of the age-matched children with NH, and they also possessed a relevant semantic knowledge of certain words that they were unable to name correctly. Children with CI had a significantly better understanding of words compared to the children with LI and ASD, but a worse understanding than those with NH. The significant differences between groups remained after controlling for age and non-verbal cognitive ability.

Conclusions

The children with CI demonstrated lexical-semantic abilities comparable to age-matched children with NH, while children with LI and ASD had a more atypical lexical-semantic profile and poorer sizes of expressive and receptive vocabularies. Dissimilar causes of neurodevelopmental processes seemingly affected lexical-semantic abilities in different ways in the clinical groups.