ASHA Learning Pass

This journal self-study course compares language performance in children with and without cochlear implants from preschool to 6th grade. The articles examine levels of language from phonology to prosody, offering insights into areas of strength and weakness as well as clinical directions. The first article examines consonant acquisition patterns based on hearing exposure. The second and third articles compare morphosyntactic, lexical, and phonological awareness profiles, the effect of literacy on each language skill, and types of errors produced in school-age children with and without cochlear implants. The fourth article explores differences in word-learning strategies that could affect lexical development and offers clinical suggestions based on these findings. The final article explores children’s abilities to discriminate emotional intent based on suprasegmental characteristics in the speech signal.

Learning Outcomes
You will be able to:

• describe how profiles of phonological sensitivity, lexical development, and morphosyntactic errors differ between children with cochlear implants and children with normal hearing in elementary school
• summarize the growth of consonant inventories in children with cochlear implants as compared to children with typical hearing
• discuss the effect of hearing status on children’s abilities to identify emotional prosody
• describe differences in word-learning strategies in preschoolers with and without cochlear implants

Learning Assessment
Online, multiple-choice exam