The Contribution of Parent Lexical Diversity and Grammatical Complexity to Later Language Outcomes in Mandarin-Speaking Children With Cochlear Implants

Purpose: The study examined the relative contribution of parentlexical diversity and grammatical complexity at different time points to subsequent language comes in Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants (CIs). Method: Participants were 25 Mandarin-speakinghildrenc who received cochleaimplantation before 30 months of age. At 1 and 2 years after CI activation, we language samples that involved the child playing with the parent for 30 min. The number of different words (NDW) and mean length of utterance (MLU) were comfrom the free play for each time point. At 3 years after CI activation, we evaluadren’s receptive and expressive language outcomes using a standardized language Results: Parent NDW and MLU at 1 and 2 years post-CI activation were signcorrelated with children’s language scores at 3 years post-CI activation, excepparent MLU at 1 year was not significantly correlated with children’s expressivguage scores. Regression analyses further revealed that, at 1 year post-CI activparent NDW was stronger than parent MLU in accounting for both children’s tive and expressive language scores at 3 years post-CI activation. At 2 years activation, parent NDW was relatively more important for children’s subseqreceptive language scores, whereas parent MLU at 2 years post-CI activation relatively more important for children’s subsequent expressive language s cores. Conclusions: The relative contributions of parent lexical diversity (NDW) grammatical complexity (MLU) to later language outcomes in Mandarin-speachildren with CIs evolved over time, particularly for expressive language. emphasis on lexical diversity and grammatical complexity in parental input schange with the child’s developmental level.