Arabic phoneme-grapheme correspondence by non-native, deaf children with cochlear implants and normal hearing children

• Published in: Cochlear implants international 2022-11, Vol.23 (6), p.347-357
• Main Authors: Anis, Farheen Naz, Umat, Cila, Ahmad, Kartini, Abdul Hamid, Badrulzaman
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Arabic; Child; Child, Preschool; Cochlear implant; Cochlear Implantation; Cochlear Implants; Deaf; Hearing; Humans; Non-native children; Phoneme-grapheme correspondence; Phonetics
• ISSN: 1467-0100; 1754-7628
• DOI: 10.1080/14670100.2022.2114583

This study aimed to compare the error patterns of Arabic phoneme-grapheme correspondence by a group of Malay children with cochlear implants (CIs) and normal hearing (NH) and the effects of the visual graphical features of Arabic graphemes (no-dot, single-dot, and multiple-dots) on the phoneme-grapheme correspondence. Participants were matched for hearing age (Mean, M = 7 ± 1.03 years) and duration of exposure to Arabic sounds (M = 2.7 ± 1.2 years). All 28 Arabic phonemes were presented through a loudspeaker and participants pointed to the graphemes associated with the presented phonemes. A total of 336 and 616 tokens were collected for six children with CI and 11 NH children for each task, i.e., phonemes repetition and phoneme-grapheme correspondence. Both groups found it easier to repeat phonemes than the phoneme-grapheme correspondence. The children with CIs showed more confusion ([ظ, ز, ذ, ض, خ, ب, ه, س, ع, & ث] >10% correct scores) in phoneme-grapheme correspondence than the NH children ([ظ:14%] and [ث: 27%]). There was a significant interaction (p = 0.001) among the three visual graphical features and hearing status (CI and NH). Our results infer that non-native Malay children with CIs and NH use different strategies to process the Arabic graphemes' visual features for phoneme-grapheme correspondence.