Lexical-semantic organization as measured by repeated word association in children who are deaf and hard of hearing who use spoken language

Rush et al. (2023). Lexical-semantic organization as measured by repeated word association in children who are deaf and hard of hearing who use spoken language. JSLHR, 66, 3925-39.

Word knowledge is usually measured in terms of quantity, that is, the number of words a child knows. However, the way a child links and stores words for retrieval is another important component of word knowledge called lexical-semantic organization. There are 3 subprocesses involved in word learning: (1) Triggering – recognition that a word is new and must be learned, (2) configuration – recognizing and mapping a phonological (speech sound) and semantic (meaning-based) representation of a new word to what it refers to, and (3) engagement – the necessary interaction between a new word and the child’s existing word knowledge to facilitate organization of stored words. Perhaps unsurprisingly, children who are deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) tend to know fewer words than their hearing peers. Available research suggests that children who are DHH may have difficulty with the triggering and engagement subprocesses of word learning, although research addressing configuration is limited. One task used to study lexical-semantic organization is a repeated word association task. In this task, an individual prompt (e.g., the word turtle) is repeated multiple times and an individual is expected to provide a different single word response each time. Responses can be analyzed in terms of their relation to the target, for example, whether responses are semantically related, clang (share sounds or rhyme with the target word), or error responses. With development, hearing children typically provide more semantically related response.

In this study, kindergarten and grade 1 children who were typical hearing, wearing hearing aids, or with cochlear implants completed a repeated word association measure including 24 stimuli words (12 nouns, 12 verbs, included in text). Each word was presented 3 different times and the child was asked to verbally respond with the first word that comes to mind but to tell a new word each time they heard the same word. No differences in responses were noted between the hearing aid and cochlear implant groups, and so these groups were collapsed for further analysis. Results indicated a developmental increase in semantically related responses to target words regardless of hearing status. The younger DHH group produced more errors and when those errors were not semantically related, they produced more errors that were not clearly in the semantic network of the target word. The authors argued that this result could suggest that young children who are DHH may not organize their words using the most efficient strategies when learning new words. Over time, however, children with DHH showed similar lexical-semantic organization as typically hearing peers.

Measuring lexical-semantic organization may provide important information about a child’s lexical organization and flexible use of words. This information could help to understand a child’s word knowledge in more depth.

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