The study, led by Lynn K. Perry and Daniel S. Messinger, researchers at the University of Miami College of Arts and Sciences, and Ivette Cejas, a researcher at the University of Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine, Miami, highlights the relationship between early vocabulary knowledge and later language. development in children with cochlear implants.

The researchers focused on the proportion of shape-based nouns in children’s initial vocabulary. Shape-based nouns are words like “chair” or “cup” that describe a category of objects based on their shape, rather than other characteristics such as color or material.

Their findings, published in Developmental sciencesshow that a higher proportion of shape-based nouns in a child’s vocabulary shortly after cochlear implantation was associated with better language development over the next three years.

The researchers also found that the association between shape-based nouns and long-term language development was stronger in children who received cochlear implants than in children with normal hearing. The findings have implications for efforts to help children with hearing loss overcome initial language delays caused by a lack of auditory input and access to speech sounds before receiving cochlear implants.

“Learning more shape-based nouns seemed to affect both the number of words they knew as well as their grammatical skills and other aspects of language,” said Perry, first author of the paper and an associate professor at Department of Psychology. “Particularly for children with cochlear implants, it was such a strong predictor that even three years later we were able to account for some of the differences in their language skills.”

The data used in this study were collected as part of the Childhood Development After Cochlear Implantation Study, a multisite, national longitudinal study. Researchers analyzed data on the language abilities of young children with cochlear implants before their implantation surgery and every six months after implantation. They also looked at data on children with normal hearing recruited from preschools.

The study, supported by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders at the National Institutes of Health, found that children with a greater proportion of shape-based nouns in their vocabulary shortly after implantation had a broader vocabulary at one year, two years. years and three years after implantation. They also performed better on standardized tests of other language skills, and they were more likely to have caught up with their peers with normal hearing.

Previous studies have indicated the importance of form-based nouns in the language development of children with normal hearing, and that repeating this pattern in early-learned English vocabulary can help children acquire new words. But before this study, little was known about the role of shape-based nouns in the language development of children with cochlear implants.

“This is a real experiment in the wild showing that the types of words a child knows shape their language development,” said Messinger, a professor in the Department of Psychology. “It is notable that these effects were stronger among cochlear implant users, perhaps because the shape-based names guided their word learning after the implants gave them access to hearing.”

The results suggest that knowledge of shape-based nouns facilitates children’s language development and may help compensate for initial language delays in children with cochlear implants.

“Although cochlear implants have become the standard of care for children with severe to profound bilateral hearing loss, there continues to be significant variability in their spoken language development,” said Cejas, professor and director of the family support services in the department of otolaryngology. at the Miller School of Medicine. “Our work highlights a potential avenue for intervention that could help bridge the vocabulary and language gap that exists for some of these children.”

Although the study found an association between the initial proportion of shape-based nouns in a child’s vocabulary and later language development, the researchers said further research was needed to establish causality. .

They also noted that they did not yet know why some children had a greater proportion of shape-based nouns in their vocabulary than others.

“Within the group of children with cochlear implants and children in general, we see differences in terms of which words children learn first,” Perry said. “I think figuring out where those differences come from will be important to know how to best support all learners.”