Links of Prosodic Stress Perception and Musical Activities to Language Skills of Children With Cochlear Implants and Normal Hearing

Objectives: A major issue in the rehabilitation of children with cochlear implants (CIs) is unexplained variance in their language skills, where many of them lag behind children with normal hearing (NH). Here, we assess links between generative language skills and the perception of prosodic stress, and with musical and parental activities in children with CIs and NH. Understanding these links is expected to guide future research and toward supporting language development in children with a CI.

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Acquisition of Focus by Normal Hearing and Cochlear Implanted Children: The Role of Musical Experience

Two experiments investigated the perception of compound vs. phrasal stress and narrow focus in normally hearing children and children with Cochlear Implants (CI). Additionally, we investigated whether musical experience would predict children’s performance in these tasks. The results showed no difference between CI and normal­hearing (NH) children in either experiment …

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The perception of prosody and associated auditory cues in early-implanted children; the role of auditory working memory and musical activities

We studied prosodic perception in early-implanted children in relation to auditory discrimination, auditory working memory, and exposure to music. Word and sentence stress perception, discrimination of fundamental frequency (F0), intensity and duration, and forward digit span were measured twice over approximately 16 months. Musical activities were assessed by questionnaire. The participants were twenty-one early-implanted and normal-hearing (NH) children (age 4–13 years). As a result, children with cochlear implants (CIs) exposed to music performed better than others in stress perception and F0 discrimination …

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