Contribution of Phonological Information to Lexical Access in School-Age Children With Cochlear Implants

PURPOSE: This study explores the interplay of phonological and lexical processing in children, focusing on whether German-speaking school-age children with cochlear implants (CIs) use phonological information for lexical access in the same way as their peers with typical hearing (TH). The study aimed at understanding how different phonological contrasts between a target and a phonological competitor affect lexical access when this acoustic information is less available, as is the case with CIs. METHOD: Using an eye-tracking visual-world paradigm, we hypothesized that lexical access would differ for the children with CIs due to their shorter hearing experience and/or the characteristics of the auditory input provided by the implants. We further hypothesized that processing the difference between a target and its phonological competitor would depend on the types and number of contrasting features available. RESULTS: Our results show that (a) lexical access is slowed down in children with CIs when compared to their peers with TH, (b) not all phonological contrasts are used similarly in lexical access in both groups, and (c) individual factors do not explain these effects in this study. CONCLUSIONS: These results show that school-age children using CIs have a slower lexical access than their peers; that pattern is, however, not qualitatively different with regard to the phonological information. Lexical access is facilitated for all children when phonological neighbors are less closely related and when specific phonological features are present-such as voicing in consonants and the front-back dimension in vowels. SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.32988002.