A comparison of morpho-syntactic abilities in deaf children with cochlear implant and 5-year-old normal-hearing children

Introduction: Children with cochlear implants (CIs) have problems in morpho-syntactic abilities more than other language skills. The current study was aimed to evaluate the language samples of children with CIs by using a numerical measurement tool, Persian developmental sentence scoring (PDSS). Method: In this cross-sectional, descriptive, analytical study, 33 children (22 children with CIs and 11 with normal hearing) were recruited. Language samples of the children were recorded during the description of pictures. The PDSS was used as a reliable numerical measurement tool for analyzing the first 100 consecutive intelligible utterances. Results: We found a significant difference in the mean PDSS total scores (p = 0.0001) between the normalhearing children and deaf children using CIs for 5 years. Similarly, the results revealed a significant difference in the mean PDSS total scores (p = 0.0001) between the normal-hearing children and 5-year-old deaf children with CIs. There was no significant difference in the mean PDSS total scores between the two groups of children with CIs. Conclusion: Children with CIs can form simple sentences but probably exhibit poor abilities for using complex sentences and essential morphology items.