MORLAS

Morphosyntactic language skills in deaf children with a cochlear implant: a cross-linguistic study on Dutch and German

Coordinatore	UNIVERSITEIT ANTWERPEN    more  Organization address address: PRINSSTRAAT 13 city: ANTWERPEN postcode: 2000 contact info Titolo: Ms. Nome: Anne Cognome: Adams Email: send email Telefono: +32 3 265 30 28 Fax: +32 3 265 30 11
Nazionalità Coordinatore	Belgium [BE]
Totale costo	110˙625 €
EC contributo	110˙625 €
Programma	FP7-PEOPLE Specific programme "People" implementing the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Community for research, technological development and demonstration activities (2007 to 2013)
Code Call	FP7-PEOPLE-2011-IEF
Funding Scheme	MC-IEF
Anno di inizio	2012
Periodo (anno-mese-giorno)	2012-07-01   -   2013-09-30

 Partecipanti

#	participant	country	role	EC contrib. [€]
1	UNIVERSITEIT ANTWERPEN  Organization address address: PRINSSTRAAT 13 city: ANTWERPEN postcode: 2000 contact info Titolo: Ms. Nome: Anne Cognome: Adams Email: send email Telefono: +32 3 265 30 28 Fax: +32 3 265 30 11	BE (ANTWERPEN)	coordinator	110˙625.00

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'Nowadays, many profoundly deaf children are given access to auditory information by means of a cochlear implant (CI). Thanks to this device, these children are able to develop oral speech and language. However, there are still many open questions about the nature of speech and language skills of CI children. Previous research has focused mainly on perceptual achievements, while far less attention has been paid to speech and language production, i.e. to how well do CI children speak? Moreover, little is known about the “long term” development, i.e. what is the language achievement of CI children when they are at school age? This is especially relevant in view of the fact that more and more CI children are being integrated into the main stream school system. The aim of this project is to investigate speech and language skills of CI children entering primary school. The project will focus on CI children’s achievements in a major aspect of language, its morphosyntax. Gaining command of the full range of morphosyntactic features of a language requires highly sophisticated processing abilities and still constitutes a major challenge even for normally hearing children when they enter primary school. Furthermore, the project will compare CI children’s speech and language skills in two different languages, Dutch and German. This cross-linguistic perspective will allow to see whether CI children’s achievements vary depending on the specific language the child is exposed to. The study participants (10 CI children and 10 normally hearing peers, in each language) will be recruited from schools in Flanders (Belgium) and in Vienna (Austria). In both countries, children will be tested using a comparable research methodology and approach. The project will not only contribute to understanding the effects of a perceptual deficit on language learning, but will also help to develop standard language tests and adequate intervention programs for this new child population.'

Descrizione progetto (Article)

Morphosyntax, or the way different forms of a word are related, is one of the more challenging aspects of learning a language.

However, it was not known if this is more challenging for a child with a CI than a normally-hearing child.The EU-funded MORLAS project aimed to study the speech level of CI children entering primary school by examining their grasp of morphosyntax.

The study included German- and Dutch-speaking children to see whether there was any variation between different languages.Researchers first developed a theoretical framework that quantified the differences in morphosyntactic structure between the two languages.

This allowed them to compare results between German and Dutch children.

The data collection protocols from the Dutch study group were adapted for the German part of the study.Data were collected from 10 CI children and 10 normally-hearing children in Flanders (Dutch), and 10 CI children and 30 normally-hearing children in Vienna (German).

MORLAS found that only minor differences existed between German and Dutch children.For the most part, CI children showed the same learning patterns as normally-hearing children, with the exception of noun plural formation, where CI children lagged behind.

This information will help educators and parents improve the linguistic development of children with CIs.