The Grammatical Abilities in a Speech Sample of Persian-speaking Children With Cochlear Implants

Objectives: Studies reported that children with Cochlear Implant (Cl) presented difficulties in grammatical acquisition. The Persian language is inflectional. The present study aimed to compare wordlevel inflections in the language samples of CI recipients and healthyhearing children. Methods: Thirty children were recruited in this descriptiveanalytical crosssectional study. The Language Sample Analysis (LSA) was used as a method of language production evaluation. Language samples were gathered using picture descriptions. A total of 3000 intelligible utterances were elicited and transcribed. An adaptation of the Language Assessment, Remediation, and Screening Procedure (LARSP) for Persian (PLARSP), and the Mean Length of Utterance (MLU) techniques were used for the analyses of utterances. Results: The stages of language development of CI recipients were lower than those of the healthy children. The obtained results indicated a significant difference between children with CI and healthyhearing children in MLU (P=0.0001). Moreover, we found a significant difference between the study groups in the mean frequency of wordlevel inflections (P=0.0001). Discussion: Children with CI use less wordlevel inflections, compared to their healthyhearing counterparts.