Browsing by Author "Eerikäinen, Tiiti"

Objectives. Hearing impaired (HI) children have been found to perform more poorly in tasks measuring semantic verbal fluency compared to normal hearing peers. Music activities are known to have a positive connection to the word finding skills in HI-children. However, there has not been yet studies to find out whether organized music activities have an effect on semantic verbal fluency skills in young HI children. The purpose of this study was to determine how the number of accepted words in semantic verbal fluency task develops during a music intervention in HI-children and whether background variables (age, mother’s education and hearing device) affect development. There was also a desire to find out the effect of singing at home on the development of verbal fluency task. In addition, it was examined whether the word retrieval strategies change during the music intervention and whether they are influenced by background variables. Methods. The participants (n = 15) were HI-children aged 2–6 years. Participants were divided into non-singers and singers based how much their parents sang at home. Verbal fluency (VF) and verbal fluency strategies were measured with two semantic VF tasks (animals and clothes). Tests were performed before (T1) and after (T2) the children participated in CIsumusa music intervention, organized by LapCi ry. The results were analyzed by statistical methods. Results and conclusions. The participants developed in verbal fluency task during the music intervention in both animal and clothing categories. Higher age was strongly associated with better development in both categories. Mother’s education was related to development in the animal task. Children of non-singers developed during the music intervention, but children of singers did not. However, children of singers performed better at T1 compared to children of non-singers. In a group of all participants the number of clusters increased during the music intervention in both animal and clothing tasks and the cluster size increased in the clothing task. Higher age was associated with an increase in the number of clusters, but not in cluster size. Based on the results, the music intervention was able to improve VF of children who performed poorly before the intervention. The results suggest that if there is no singing or musical activity at home, out-of-home music activities that include singing can improve VF. Singing at home and music interventions can be recommended to children with HI.