Purpose: Verbal fluency tasks assess the ability to quickly and efficiently retrieve words from the mental lexicon by requiring subjects to rapidly generate words within a phonological or semantic category. This study investigated differences between cochlear implant users and normal-hearing peers in the clustering and time course of word…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the information-processing strategies of early-implanted, prelingually deaf cochlear implant (CI) users with the California Verbal Learning Test--Second Edition (CVLT-II; Delis, Kramer, Kaplan, & Ober, 2000), a well-established normed measure of verbal learning and memory used in…

Purpose: Statistical learning--the ability to learn patterns in environmental input--is increasingly recognized as a foundational mechanism necessary for the successful acquisition of spoken language. Spoken language is a complex, serially presented signal that contains embedded statistical relations among linguistic units, such as phonemes,…

Purpose: Auditory deprivation has downstream effects on the development of language and executive functioning (EF) in prelingually deaf children with cochlear implants (CIs), but little is known about the very early development of EF during preschool ages in children with CIs. This study investigated the longitudinal development of EF and spoken…

Purpose: Verbal working memory (VWM) delays are commonly found in prelingually deaf youth with cochlear implants (CIs), albeit with considerable interindividual variability. However, little is known about the neurocognitive information-processing mechanisms underlying these delays and how these mechanisms relate to spoken language outcomes. The…

Purpose: This preliminary research examined (a) the perception of two common sources of indexical variability in speech--regional dialects and foreign accents, and (b) the relation between indexical processing and sentence recognition among prelingually deaf, long-term cochlear implant (CI) users and normal-hearing (NH) peers. Method: Forty-three…

Purpose: We sought to determine whether speech perception and language skills measured early after cochlear implantation in children who are deaf, and early postimplant growth in speech perception and language skills, predict long-term speech perception, language, and neurocognitive outcomes. Method: Thirty-six long-term users of cochlear…

Purpose: The current study adopts a systematic approach to the examination of working memory components in pediatric cochlear implant (CI) users by separately assessing contributions of encoding, storage, and retrieval. Method: Forty-nine long-term CI users and 56 typically hearing controls completed forward and backward span tasks with 3 stimulus…

In hearing children, reading skills have been found to be closely related to phonological awareness. We used several standardized tests to investigate the reading and phonological awareness skills of 27 deaf school-age children who were experienced cochlear implant users. Approximately two-thirds of the children performed at or above the level of…

This study investigated if a period of auditory sensory deprivation followed by degraded auditory input and related language delays affects visual concept formation skills in long-term prelingually deaf cochlear implant (CI) users. We also examined if concept formation skills are mediated or moderated by other neurocognitive domains (i.e.,…

Deaf children with cochlear implants (CIs) are at risk for psychosocial adjustment problems, possibly due to delayed speech-language skills. This study investigated associations between a core component of spoken-language ability--speech intelligibility--and the psychosocial development of prelingually deaf CI users. Audio-transcription measures…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine whether deficits in executive functioning (EF) in children with cochlear implants (CIs) emerge as early as the preschool years. Method: Two groups of children ages 3 to 6 years participated in this cross-sectional study: 24 preschoolers who had CIs prior to 36 months of age and 21 preschoolers…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to report how "verbal rehearsal speed" (VRS), a form of covert speech used to maintain verbal information in working memory, and another verbal processing speed measure, perceptual encoding speed, are related to 3 domains of executive function (EF) at risk in cochlear implant (CI) users: verbal…

Purpose: Verbal short-term memory (STM) and working memory (WM) skills predict speech and language outcomes in children with cochlear implants (CIs) even after conventional demographic, device, and medical factors are taken into account. However, prior research has focused on single end point outcomes as opposed to the longitudinal process of…

Purpose: This study investigated the feasibility and efficacy of a working memory training program for improving memory and language skills in a sample of 9 children who are deaf (age 7-15 years) with cochlear implants (CIs). Method: All children completed the Cogmed Working Memory Training program on a home computer over a 5-week period.…