Has anyone read this new study?

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Teacherofthedeaf

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This is the full study. It is brand new.
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/pediatrics/early/2017/06/08/peds.2016-3489.full.pdf

BACKGROUND: Most children with hearing loss who receive cochlear implants (CI) learn spoken abstract language, and parents must choose early on whether to use sign language to accompany speech at home. We address whether parents’ use of sign language before and after CI positively influences auditory-only speech recognition, speech intelligibility, spoken language, and reading outcomes.

METHODS: Three groups of children with CIs from a nationwide database who differed in the duration of early sign language exposure provided in their homes were compared in their progress through elementary grades. The groups did not differ in demographic, auditory, or linguistic characteristics before implantation.

RESULTS: Children without early sign language exposure achieved better speech recognition skills over the first 3 years postimplant and exhibited a statistically significant advantage in spoken language and reading near the end of elementary grades over children exposed to sign language. Over 70% of children without sign language exposure achieved ageappropriate spoken language compared with only 39% of those exposed for 3 or more years. Early speech perception predicted speech intelligibility in middle elementary grades. Children without sign language exposure produced speech that was more intelligible (mean = 70%) than those exposed to sign language (mean = 51%).

CONCLUSIONS: This study provides the most compelling support yet available in CI literature for the benefits of spoken language input for promoting verbal development in children implanted by 3 years of age. Contrary to earlier published assertions, there was no advantage to parents’ use of sign language either before or after CI.
 
Maybe because it's pro spoken language and anti sign language.

I'd think deaf education would be more about sign language not CIs & spoken language.
 
Maybe because it's pro spoken language and anti sign language.

I'd think deaf education would be more about sign language not CIs & spoken language.
Since a large number of deaf children today have cochlear implants, of course they are a part of deaf education. I think it is an important study because it has a large group, followed the subjects for a number of years and made sure to compare spoken language, sign before implantation, and sign before and after implantation.

I don't think we should dismiss research because we don't like what it says. Do you have concerns about the methodology or that the conclusions are not supported by the data?
 
The research outcome is painful to 'hear' but it is certainly relevant. Curses on Reality.
 
@Teacherofthedeaf

In my opinion this research starts already biased, considering 10% of the time using any form of signing is considered to be using sign language...

If you say language exposure and want comparative data, it needs to be equal data. Children in the No sign group get constant input in their L1, children in sign group already start from 10%L1 input.
 
@Teacherofthedeaf

In my opinion this research starts already biased, considering 10% of the time using any form of signing is considered to be using sign language...

If you say language exposure and want comparative data, it needs to be equal data. Children in the No sign group get constant input in their L1, children in sign group already start from 10%L1 input.
How I appreciate input from knowledgeable people! What is 'input in L1 and 10% L1 input, if it an be explained briefly?
 
The study makes perfect sense to me. The children who receive nothing but auditory responses will have a better understanding of spoken language since they will hear more of it than those who receive both spoken and sign language. It's like the child who hears only their parents native tongue at home and english out in the real world and those children who only speak english at home. The child who is bi lingual usually ends up with a better grasp of the language they hear at home that they hear all the time and although their english may be good it won't be as good as their peers who have spoken nothing but english their entire lives.
 
I'm slightly confused. Nowhere in the report did they specify the methodology of the tests. If the child was inclined to sign, was he/she forbidden to do so during the tests? Were they tested singly or in groups?
All I know is that if you put a group of implanted children together, they won't talk with each other like college professors. They will sign or pantomime words they get stuck on. Nothing is more natural.
 
@Teacherofthedeaf

In my opinion this research starts already biased, considering 10% of the time using any form of signing is considered to be using sign language...

If you say language exposure and want comparative data, it needs to be equal data. Children in the No sign group get constant input in their L1, children in sign group already start from 10%L1 input.
So your argument is that they needed to sign more? The sign and non-sign kids all had implants, so their access to spoken language was the same. The only difference was the addition of sign.
 
I'm slightly confused. Nowhere in the report did they specify the methodology of the tests. If the child was inclined to sign, was he/she forbidden to do so during the tests? Were they tested singly or in groups?
All I know is that if you put a group of implanted children together, they won't talk with each other like college professors. They will sign or pantomime words they get stuck on. Nothing is more natural.

Auditory development was tracked over the first 3 years after CI activation. Speech intelligibility was measured near the middle of elementary school (age = 6.0–8.9 years). Spoken language and reading outcomes were examined at a point near early (age = 5.0–7.9) and near late (age = 9.0–11.9) elementary grades. Tests were administered by certified audiologists and speech language pathologists at each CI Center.

The Speech Recognition Index in Quiet (SRI-Q) combines multiple results from a hierarchical test battery into a single cumulative speech perception index, accounting for both the difficulty level and accuracy on a specific test.12 SRI-Q values range from 0 to 600, with lower scores (0–100) representing parent report on the Meaningful Auditory Integration Scale.11,
13 Midrange scores (101 –300) represent closed-set word recognition: Early Speech Perception Intelligibility Test.15 Highest values (301–600) delineate open-set speech recognition: Lexical Neighborhood Test, 16 Phonetically-Balanced Word Lists-Kindergarten, 17 and Hearing in Noise Test for Children (administered in quiet).

Audio recordings were made of each child imitating 36 sentences (3, 5, or 7 syllables long).19 Each sentence contained a key word that was either predicted by context (Read the book) or not (Get the cake). Normal hearing adults with no previous experience listening to the speech of individuals who are deaf were instructed to write down as much of the sentence as they understood. Three judges provided responses to each sentence, and no judge listened to more than 1 sentence from the same child. Each overall intelligibility score represents the percent of 36 key words correctly understood across a total of 108 judgments.

The Core Composite standardized score (SS) on the Comprehensive Assessment of Spoken Language (CASL)20 was used to assess language in relation to hearing age-mates in the normative sample. All children received the “core” language subtests appropriate for their age, drawn from the antonyms, syntax construction, paragraph comprehension, nonliteral language, pragmatic judgment, grammatical morphemes, and sentence comprehension subtests.

The Passage Comprehension subtest of Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Achievement (WJ)21 measures understanding of printed words and phrases at the early elementary level and paragraph comprehension at later grades. Results are expressed in SS in relation to hearing age.
 
I'm slightly confused. Nowhere in the report did they specify the methodology of the tests. If the child was inclined to sign, was he/she forbidden to do so during the tests? Were they tested singly or in groups?
All I know is that if you put a group of implanted children together, they won't talk with each other like college professors. They will sign or pantomime words they get stuck on. Nothing is more natural.
It had nothing to do with their inclination to sign or not to sign. It had to do with how well they did with speech recognition. The results were that those who didn't have early sign exposure did better with speech recognition than those who signed. It basically boils down to the more spoken words you hear, the more you will understand. Kinda like practicing anything, the more you put in the better you will become at it.
 
So your argument is that they needed to sign more? The sign and non-sign kids all had implants, so their access to spoken language was the same. The only difference was the addition of sign.



No their access wasnt the same. If you want to bilingual kids, should have full language input in both languages. Not knowing Whether they were using a codes system of English or Simcom or PSE ... and this test only tests their knowledge of English.

Why is it even assumed they are still getting a lot of oral language input ? If family signs and at school they sign, where do they pick up English?

Anyhow this only measures oral English skills, and based on these results, what I see it that kids only understand 70% of language input with CI, being raised only with oral input. I would personally love to see the same results of how much language they know for only ASL input (or other local variants) and where oral languages are learned as an additional language.

@Tetracyclone L1 first language

And furthermore According to below data, this data also shows that the CI, No sign group, got their implantants earlier then the sign language group.

As Well as showing a higher IQ for the sign language group and a bigger vocabulary.
 

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It had nothing to do with their inclination to sign or not to sign. It had to do with how well they did with speech recognition. The results were that those who didn't have early sign exposure did better with speech recognition than those who signed. It basically boils down to the more spoken words you hear, the more you will understand. Kinda like practicing anything, the more you put in the better you will become at it.

I think it has EVERYTHING to do with it. In 1958 I was in elementary school in a "special education" class with other deaf children. I was six years old, and that was in Wichita, Kansas. It was a small class, something like ten of us, I cannot remember exactly. I just remember how miserable we were at times, because it was one of those deals where there were rows of headphones and microphones, the works. We spent a large part of our time at them, repeating words and phrases and trying to lipread. But we DID sign, just not in front of the teachers.
One day I found myself in a television studio, sitting in a chair with my teacher sitting across from me. She was holding a book. I think it was "See Spot Run." That damn book. We could recite it forward or backwards, if you know what I mean. She told me to keep my hands on my lap, okay? Do not move my hands at all, understand? My mother was in the wings making sure I understood. Then the cameras rolled. My teacher READ THE WHOLE DARNED BOOK to me. When she was done, she started asking my inane questions concerning the book, like, "Who got the ball?" I started moving my hands and my mother gestured at me to keep my hands still. "Spot has the ball" came my automatic reply. Whoaaaa, he TALKS!!!!!
I was the only one from my class to partake in that "study."
It still leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and sometimes I still smell piss while signing, because the school bathrooms were the only places we could sign at the school.
 
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I think it has EVERYTHING to do with it. In 1958 I was in elementary school in a "special education" class with other deaf children. I was six years old, and that was in Wichita, Kansas. It was a small class, something like ten of us, I cannot remember exactly. I just remember how miserable we were at times, because it was one of those deals where there were rows of headphones and microphones, the works. We spent a large part of our time at them, repeating words and phrases and trying to lipread. But we DID sign, just not in front of the teachers.
One day I found myself in a television studio, sitting in a chair with my teacher sitting across from me. She was holding a book. I think it was "See Spot Run." That damn book. We could recite it forward or backwards, if you know what I mean. She told me to keep my hands on my lap, okay? Do not move my hands at all, understand? My mother was in the wings making sure I understood. Then the cameras rolled. My teacher READ THE WHOLE DARNED BOOK to me. When she was done, she started asking my inane questions concerning the book, like, "Who got the ball?" I started moving my hands and my mother gestured at me to keep my hands still. "Spot has the ball" came my automatic reply. Whoaaaa, he TALKS!!!!!
I was the only one from my class to partake in that "study."
It still leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and sometimes I still smell piss while signing, because the school bathrooms were the only places we could sign at the school.

Okay, but 1958 was 1958, and when you grew up the times were different; HA's technology was different and were not as good as they are today, you probably relied on signing as a primary source of receiving and relaying information and CI had not even been thought of yet or were a pipe dream of some doctor or scientist.

Your bad experience at the TV station was a poorly conceived try at either showing that you could hear and answer question based on what she just read, you could give oral responses or who knows what else. Today they would say you were taught to the test, basically your teacher had read the story to you over and over and you had probably read it as well to the point of you knowing it forward and backwards. She then went on TV and made it appear as though you were hearing it for the first time when she really could of forgone the reading of the story and just held it up and asked you the questions, but she/they were tying to prove god knows what and you were probably the only one to partake in the "study" because your language skills were the best. They basically "cherry picked" the respondent and that was you!

The study in question had more than one student taking part in the study, they don't say how many but it's probably in the complete study, all the synopsis of the study says is it had three groups of children with CI from a nationwide database. The only thing the study had to do with signing was whether it affected how well the children in the study did with speech recognition at the end of elementary school based on how much they signed and in the end, they found that those who signed the least did the best. My daughter has a friend with a CI who received it prior to going to school and I don't think he signs at all, at least I have never seen he or his parents sign and in my opinion his speech is very good to excellent. I know this is only one example, but I had other "deaf" kids at our house over the years since my kids went to an elementary school that had the deaf school on site and some of the kids who came over had either CI's or HA's and some had excellent language skills, some were okay and some not so good. From my experience, those with the best language skills did very little signing among each other, although they could sign to their friends who's language wasn't as good as theirs was.
 
Okay, but 1958 was 1958, and when you grew up the times were different; HA's technology was different and were not as good as they are today, you probably relied on signing as a primary source of receiving and relaying information and CI had not even been thought of yet or were a pipe dream of some doctor or scientist.

Your bad experience at the TV station was a poorly conceived try at either showing that you could hear and answer question based on what she just read, you could give oral responses or who knows what else. Today they would say you were taught to the test, basically your teacher had read the story to you over and over and you had probably read it as well to the point of you knowing it forward and backwards. She then went on TV and made it appear as though you were hearing it for the first time when she really could of forgone the reading of the story and just held it up and asked you the questions, but she/they were tying to prove god knows what and you were probably the only one to partake in the "study" because your language skills were the best. They basically "cherry picked" the respondent and that was you!

The study in question had more than one student taking part in the study, they don't say how many but it's probably in the complete study, all the synopsis of the study says is it had three groups of children with CI from a nationwide database. The only thing the study had to do with signing was whether it affected how well the children in the study did with speech recognition at the end of elementary school based on how much they signed and in the end, they found that those who signed the least did the best. My daughter has a friend with a CI who received it prior to going to school and I don't think he signs at all, at least I have never seen he or his parents sign and in my opinion his speech is very good to excellent. I know this is only one example, but I had other "deaf" kids at our house over the years since my kids went to an elementary school that had the deaf school on site and some of the kids who came over had either CI's or HA's and some had excellent language skills, some were okay and some not so good. From my experience, those with the best language skills did very little signing among each other, although they could sign to their friends who's language wasn't as good as theirs was.

Thanks for the kind reply. I am in total agreement with you. Lol
I hope you forgive me for being jaded today, thinking that perhaps the "key words" were loaded with some kind of voice inflection to make them recognizable, etc.
Yeah, times are different now. In the old days we deafies were encouraged to be printers. Now that is out. Lol
Have you noticed that retail stores are closing more frequently, thanks to competition from online shopping? It begs the question: what is the use of being able to speak if the likelihood is growing that it won't be needed?
As Tetra sez, curses to reality. ;)
 
No their access wasnt the same. If you want to bilingual kids, should have full language input in both languages. Not knowing Whether they were using a codes system of English or Simcom or PSE ... and this test only tests their knowledge of English.

Why is it even assumed they are still getting a lot of oral language input ? If family signs and at school they sign, where do they pick up English?

Anyhow this only measures oral English skills, and based on these results, what I see it that kids only understand 70% of language input with CI, being raised only with oral input. I would personally love to see the same results of how much language they know for only ASL input (or other local variants) and where oral languages are learned as an additional language.

@Tetracyclone L1 first language

And furthermore According to below data, this data also shows that the CI, No sign group, got their implantants earlier then the sign language group.

As Well as showing a higher IQ for the sign language group and a bigger vocabulary.
No, it says that 70% of oral only kids catch up to hearing kids.
 
Okay, but 1958 was 1958, and when you grew up the times were different; HA's technology was different and were not as good as they are today, you probably relied on signing as a primary source of receiving and relaying information and CI had not even been thought of yet or were a pipe dream of some doctor or scientist.

Your bad experience at the TV station was a poorly conceived try at either showing that you could hear and answer question based on what she just read, you could give oral responses or who knows what else. Today they would say you were taught to the test, basically your teacher had read the story to you over and over and you had probably read it as well to the point of you knowing it forward and backwards. She then went on TV and made it appear as though you were hearing it for the first time when she really could of forgone the reading of the story and just held it up and asked you the questions, but she/they were tying to prove god knows what and you were probably the only one to partake in the "study" because your language skills were the best. They basically "cherry picked" the respondent and that was you!

The study in question had more than one student taking part in the study, they don't say how many but it's probably in the complete study, all the synopsis of the study says is it had three groups of children with CI from a nationwide database. The only thing the study had to do with signing was whether it affected how well the children in the study did with speech recognition at the end of elementary school based on how much they signed and in the end, they found that those who signed the least did the best. My daughter has a friend with a CI who received it prior to going to school and I don't think he signs at all, at least I have never seen he or his parents sign and in my opinion his speech is very good to excellent. I know this is only one example, but I had other "deaf" kids at our house over the years since my kids went to an elementary school that had the deaf school on site and some of the kids who came over had either CI's or HA's and some had excellent language skills, some were okay and some not so good. From my experience, those with the best language skills did very little signing among each other, although they could sign to their friends who's language wasn't as good as theirs was.
They had 98.
 
Seb for me you have done an excellent job of recognizing and explaining both how things have changed over time and how greatly individuals from similar background can vary from individual to individual.

Thank you.

Okay, but 1958 was 1958, and when you grew up the times were different; HA's technology was different and were not as good as they are today, you probably relied on signing as a primary source of receiving and relaying information and CI had not even been thought of yet or were a pipe dream of some doctor or scientist.

Your bad experience at the TV station was a poorly conceived try at either showing that you could hear and answer question based on what she just read, you could give oral responses or who knows what else. Today they would say you were taught to the test, basically your teacher had read the story to you over and over and you had probably read it as well to the point of you knowing it forward and backwards. She then went on TV and made it appear as though you were hearing it for the first time when she really could of forgone the reading of the story and just held it up and asked you the questions, but she/they were tying to prove god knows what and you were probably the only one to partake in the "study" because your language skills were the best. They basically "cherry picked" the respondent and that was you!

The study in question had more than one student taking part in the study, they don't say how many but it's probably in the complete study, all the synopsis of the study says is it had three groups of children with CI from a nationwide database. The only thing the study had to do with signing was whether it affected how well the children in the study did with speech recognition at the end of elementary school based on how much they signed and in the end, they found that those who signed the least did the best. My daughter has a friend with a CI who received it prior to going to school and I don't think he signs at all, at least I have never seen he or his parents sign and in my opinion his speech is very good to excellent. I know this is only one example, but I had other "deaf" kids at our house over the years since my kids went to an elementary school that had the deaf school on site and some of the kids who came over had either CI's or HA's and some had excellent language skills, some were okay and some not so good. From my experience, those with the best language skills did very little signing among each other, although they could sign to their friends who's language wasn't as good as theirs was.
 
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