Biomedical subjects

Julia Sarant

Publications and source records attributed to Julia Sarant.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2002

Cognitive processing in children using cochlear implants: the relationship between visual memory, attention, and executive functions and developing language skills.

We performed this study to determine whether children using a cochlear implant performed differently from age- and gender-matched hearing aid users on 8 neuropsychological measures of visual memory, attention, and executive functioning. The study also examined whether differences in cognitive skills could account for some of the observed variance in speech perception, vocabulary, and language abilities of hearing-impaired children. In contrast to previous studies, our results revealed no significant cognitive differences between children who use a cochlear implant and children who use hearing aids. Partial correlation analysis indicated that the children's visual memory skills, ie, their recognition memory, delayed recall, and paired associative learning memory skills, correlated significantly with their language skills. When examined at a significance level of .01, attention and executive functioning skills did not relate to the children's developing speech perception, vocabulary, or language skills. The results suggested that differences in visual memory skills may account for some of the variance seen in the language abilities of children using implants and children using hearing aids.

Adolescent↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Speech perception and language criteria for paediatric cochlear implant candidature.

Existing criteria for cochlear implantation of children with impaired hearing aim to select children who will eventually achieve better speech perception scores with an implant than with a hearing aid. It is difficult to predict the eventual outcomes with hearing aid and implant because speech perception scores typically increase with age, and because the distribution of scores for implant and hearing aid users overlap considerably at all ages. This paper shows how speech perception scores can be combined with spoken language measures to arrive at an objective criterion for implant selection. The method also allows estimation of the likely increase in speech perception score within a few months of implantation and estimation of the probability that the child will perform better with the implant than the hearing aid. The criteria were based on data from 135 evaluations of 50 children using cochlear implants with monosyllabic words, open-set sentences, the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals, and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. Data from 114 evaluations of 43 children using hearing aids were used to illustrate the sensitivity of the criteria.

Audiometry, Pure-Tone↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Language and speech perception outcomes in hearing-impaired children with and without connexin 26 mutations.

This study addressed the question of whether a hearing loss caused by mutations in the connexin 26 gene had a significant effect on language and speech perception outcomes in children using cochlear implants or hearing aids. The families of children who had participated in two previous studies of language development were invited to participate in this genetic study. From the 52 children whose families agreed to participate, 15 children with connexin 26 mutations in both chromosomes were identified. After taking into account other factors which are known to affect language development and speech perception in children with impaired hearing, no significant differences were found between the 15 children where connexin 26 was known to be the cause of deafness and the other 37 children in the study.

Child↗