Relationships between reading comprehension and mind-reading in children with cochlear implants from fourth through sixth grades

Abstract

Objectives: The purposes of this study were to compare the reading comprehension (RC) performance between group by question types (literal vs. inference); to investigate the performance of each group on mind-reading; to investigate which variables best predict RC in children with cochlear implant (CI) compared to children with normal hearing (NH). Methods: A total of 32 children composed of 16 children with CI aged from 9 to 12 years old and 16 of their NH peers participated in the study. Children were tested on RC and mind-reading task. Results: There was a significant main effect of RC according to question types. Children performed better in literal RC than in inference RC. The group by question type of RC interaction was not significant. Children with CI's mind-reading ability were significantly lower than NH children. Correlation analysis revealed that literal RC scores were significantly correlated with receptive vocabulary and inference RC scores were significantly correlated with mind-reading ability in NH children. However, CI children's literal RC and inference RC scores were significantly correlated with expressive vocabulary. The stepwise regression analysis indicated that the best predictor of literal RC for NH children was receptive vocabulary and the best predictor of inference RC for NH children was mindreading ability. However, children with CI's best predictor of literal RC and inference RC were expressive vocabulary. Conclusion: The results of this study suggest that CI's RC inefficiently processed compared to NH children. They have difficulty in using top-down process of RC as well as using bottom-up process. © 2013 Korean Academy of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology.