The influence of auditory selective attention on linguistic outcomes in deaf and hard of hearing children with cochlear implants

Purpose Auditory Selective Attention (ASA) is crucial to focus on significant auditory stimuli without being distracted by irrelevant auditory signals and has an important role on language development. The present study aimed to investigate the unique contribution of ASA on the linguistic levels reached by a group of cochlear implanted (CI) children. Methods Thirty-four CI children with a median age of 10.05 years were tested using both the “Batteria per la Valutazione dell’Attenzione Uditiva e della Memoria di Lavoro Fonologica nell’età evolutiva-VAUM-ELF”, to assess their ASA skills, and two Italian standardized tests, to measure lexical and morphosyntactic skills. A regression analysis, including also demographic and audiological variables, was conducted to assess the unique contribution of ASA on language skills. Results The percentages of CI children with adequate ASA performances ranged from 50% to 29.4%. Bilateral CI children performed better than their monolateral peers did. ASA skills revealed to give an independent contribute to linguistic skills, accounting alone for the 25% of the observed variance. Conclusions The present findings are clinically relevant as they highlight the importance to assess ASA skills as early as possible, due to their important role in language development. Using simple clinical instruments, ASA skills could be studied at early developmental stages. This may provide us additional information to traditional auditory testing and may allow us to implement specific training programs that could positively contribute to the development of neural mechanisms of ASA and, consequently, induce improvements in language skills.