Talita Fortunato-Tavares1, Richard G Schwartz2, Klara Marton2, Claudia F de Andrade3, Derek Houston4. 1. Lehman College, City University of New York, Bronx. 2. The Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York. 3. Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil. 4. The Ohio State University College of Medicine and Nationwide Children's Hospital, Columbus.
Abstract
Purpose: This study investigated prosodic boundary effects on the comprehension of attachment ambiguities in children with cochlear implants (CIs) and normal hearing (NH) and tested the absolute boundary hypothesis and the relative boundary hypothesis. Processing speed was also investigated. Method: Fifteen children with NH and 13 children with CIs (ages 8-12 years) who are monolingual speakers of Brazilian Portuguese participated in a computerized comprehension task with sentences containing prepositional phrase attachment ambiguity and manipulations of prosodic boundaries. Results: Children with NH and children with CIs differed in how they used prosodic forms to disambiguate sentences. Children in both groups provided responses consistent with half of the predictions of the relative boundary hypothesis. The absolute boundary hypothesis did not characterize the syntactic disambiguation of children with CIs. Processing speed was similar in both groups. Conclusions: Children with CIs do not use prosodic information to disambiguate sentences or to facilitate comprehension of unambiguous sentences similarly to children with NH. The results suggest that cross-linguistic differences may interact with syntactic disambiguation. Prosodic contrasts that affect sentence comprehension need to be addressed directly in intervention with children with CIs.
Purpose: This study investigated prosodic boundary effects on the comprehension of attachment ambiguities in children with cochlear implants (CIs) and normal hearing (NH) and tested the absolute boundary hypothesis and the relative boundary hypothesis. Processing speed was also investigated. Method: Fifteen children with NH and 13 children with CIs (ages 8-12 years) who are monolingual speakers of Brazilian Portuguese participated in a computerized comprehension task with sentences containing prepositional phrase attachment ambiguity and manipulations of prosodic boundaries. Results:Children with NH and children with CIs differed in how they used prosodic forms to disambiguate sentences. Children in both groups provided responses consistent with half of the predictions of the relative boundary hypothesis. The absolute boundary hypothesis did not characterize the syntactic disambiguation of children with CIs. Processing speed was similar in both groups. Conclusions: Children with CIs do not use prosodic information to disambiguate sentences or to facilitate comprehension of unambiguous sentences similarly to children with NH. The results suggest that cross-linguistic differences may interact with syntactic disambiguation. Prosodic contrasts that affect sentence comprehension need to be addressed directly in intervention with children with CIs.
Authors: Willemijn Heeren; Martine Coene; Bart Vaerenberg; Andrei Avram; Anna Cardinaletti; Luca del Bo; Alexandru Pascu; Francesca Volpato; Paul J Govaerts Journal: Cochlear Implants Int Date: 2012-03-08
Authors: Jessica Beer; William G Kronenberger; Irina Castellanos; Bethany G Colson; Shirley C Henning; David B Pisoni Journal: J Speech Lang Hear Res Date: 2014-08 Impact factor: 2.297
Authors: Emily A Tobey; Donna Thal; John K Niparko; Laurie S Eisenberg; Alexandra L Quittner; Nae-Yuh Wang Journal: Int J Audiol Date: 2013-02-28 Impact factor: 2.117