Browsing by Author "Huovinen, Anni"

Aims. In previous studies a link between nonword repetition skills and children’s language skills such as phonological knowledge and reading skills. Musical activity has been found to improve children’s cognitive development and language skills. Nonword repetition and nonword span have been widely used as a measure of phonological skills and working memory. The aim of the study was to find out whether there is a connection between singing at home and phonological skills or working memory in children with hearing impairment. The second aim of the study was to find out whether there is a correlation of performance in these two tasks and is there a decrease in parental singing as the child grows older. Methods. The study was conducted as a multiple case study. The participants were recruited from CIsumusa, a speech-music playschool for hearing-impaired children. The participants were nine Finnish-speaking hearing-impaired children aged 1–6 years who used either cochlear implants or hearing aids or both. The data was comprised of nonword repetition and nonword span tasks completed by the children. The parents of the participants filled some questionnaires about musical activity of the family which were also analyzed in the study. The children were divided into four groups for further paired analysis: 1) the children whose parents sing to them daily, 2) those whose parents sing to them less frequently than daily, 3) the children who sing daily, 4) the children who sing less frequently than daily. Nonparametric methods (such as Mann Whitney U-test) were used for statistical analysis. Results and Conclusions. No statistically significant differences were found between singing groups. A statistically significant correlation was found between performances in nonword repetition and nonword span tasks. It was found that the children over 4 years and 3 months old repeated the nonwords significantly more correctly by the number of syllables than the younger participants. It was also found that the children whose parents sing to them daily were on average 13,45 months younger than the children whose parents sing to them less frequently, even though the age difference was not statistically significant. Due to small number of subjects the results may be considered indicative, but based on them and previous research, singing should be used in speech therapy rehabilitation and home training.