The Grammatical Abilities in a Speech Sample of Persian-speaking Children With Cochlear Implants

Objectives: Studies reported that children with Cochlear Implant (Cl) presented difficulties in grammatical acquisition. The Persian language is inflectional. The present study aimed to compare word-level inflections in the language samples of CI recipients and healthy-hearing children. Methods: Thirty children were recruited in this descriptive-analytical cross-sectional study. The Language Sample Analysis (LSA) was used as a method of language production evaluation. Language samples were gathered using picture descriptions. A total of 3000 intelligible utterances were elicited and transcribed. An adaptation of the Language Assessment, Remediation, and Screening Procedure (LARSP) for Persian (P-LARSP), and the Mean Length of Utterance (MLU) techniques were used for the analyses of utterances. Results: The stages of language development of CI recipients were lower than those of the healthy children. The obtained results indicated a significant difference between children with CI and healthy-hearing children in MLU (P=0.0001). Moreover, we found a significant difference between the study groups in the mean frequency of word-level inflections (P=0.0001). Discussion: Children with CI use less word-level inflections, compared to their healthy-hearing counterparts.