Phonological awareness in German-speaking preschool children with cochlear implants - 3 case examples.

OBJECTIVE: The aim was to explore PA skills German-speaking preschool children with cochlea implants (CIs) and how these skills may be related to their speech and language skills. METHODS: Three monolingual German-speaking pre-school children aged 5;04-6;01 with bilateral CIs were tested. Their cognitive, speech and language skills were assessed. Six subtests of a standardized PA test battery were administered (i.e. rhyme identification, rhyme production; phoneme identification- input and -output; phoneme blending-input and -output). RESULTS: All three children showed distinctive PA profiles. One boy, who had no spoken language deficits, struggled to complete the rhyme tasks but performed well on three phoneme tasks. However, he showed a discrepancy between expressive and receptive phoneme blending skills, scoring poorly on the expressive subtest. The second boy, who displayed grammar comprehension and expressive vocabulary difficulties, showed a mixed profile, with a below average performance on rhyme production. The girl who had significant speech and language deficits scored below average on all six PA subtests. CONCLUSIONS: PA profiles in children with CI vary considerably and PA testing should include a range of different PA tasks. The assumed link between spoken language deficits and PA difficulties shown in children with normal hearing could be confirmed.

Development and evaluation of the LittlEARS® Early Speech Production Questionnaire - LEESPQ.

OBJECTIVE: Universal Newborn Hearing Screening programs, now instituted throughout the German-speaking countries, allow hearing loss to be detected and treated much earlier than ever before. With this earlier detection, arises the need for tools fit for assessing the very early speech and language production development of today's younger (0-18 month old) children. We have created the LittlEARS® Early Speech Production Questionnaire, with the aim of meeting this need. METHODS: 600 questionnaires of the pilot version of the LittlEARS® Early Speech Production Questionnaire were distributed to parents via pediatricians' practices, day care centers, and personal contact. The completed questionnaires were statistically analyzed to determine their reliability, predictive accuracy, internal consistency, and to what extent gender or unilingualism influenced a child's score. Further, a norm curve was generated to plot the children's increased expected speech production ability with age. RESULTS: Analysis of the data from the 352/600 returned questionnaires revealed that scores on LittlEARS® Early Speech Production Questionnaire correlate positively with a child's age, with older children scoring higher than do younger children. Further, the questionnaire has a high measuring reliability, high predictability, high unidemensionality of scale, and is not significantly gender or uni-/multilingually biased. A norm curve for expected development with age was created. CONCLUSIONS: The LittlEARS® Early Speech Production Questionnaire (LEESPQ) is a valid tool for assessing the most important milestones in very early development of speech and language production of German language children with normal hearing aged 0-18 months old. The questionnaire is a potentially useful tool for long-term infant screening and follow-up testing and for children with normal hearing and those who would benefit from or use hearing devices.