| Abstract | The purpose of this study was to compare the vocabulary categorization performance of children with cochlear implants to children with normal hearing. Thirty children participated in this study: ten children with cochlear implants (mean age = 89 months), ten children with normal hearing matched for age, and ten children matched for vocabulary size. Each participant completed three tasks to measure (a) nonlinguistic categorization, (b) category label generation, and (c) category member listing performance. Analysis of variance demonstrated that children in the cochlear implant group sorted pictures with accuracy consistent with the age-matched group and more accurately than the vocabulary group (F(1,28) = 5.821, p = .023). ANOVA indicated that children with cochlear implants demonstrate delayed knowledge of superordinate relations as compared to the age-matched group, similar to the vocabulary group (F(1,28) = 8.432, p = .00712). Finally, ANOVA also indicated that none of the groups varied in ability to generate lists from various categories (F(1,28) = 1.496, p = .231). Thus, children with cochlear implants demonstrate a delay specifically in superordinate category relationship knowledge, which can affect academic performance. |
