Improving oral sentence production in children with cochlear implants: effects of equivalence-based instruction and matrix training
Equivalence-based instruction plus matrix training lifts speech accuracy and sparks new sentences in kids with cochlear implants.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Three Brazilian kids with cochlear implants joined the study. . All used hearing tech daily.
The team taught subject-verb-object sentences with pictures. They used two tricks: equivalence-based instruction and matrix training. Kids first matched pictures to spoken words. Then they built new sentences from a word grid.
What they found
Every child learned the trained word pairs fast. They also passed tests for derived relations without extra teaching.
Speech accuracy jumped from a large share to a large share when they described new pictures. Kids could say untrained matrix sentences like "The dog kicks the ball" even though no one taught that exact line.
How this fits with other research
Fellinger et al. (2022) warn that poor language in deaf clients fuels severe behavior. Neves shows we can fix the language side early with EBI plus matrix work.
Hao et al. (2010) found that deaf adults with limited language still pass some mind-reading tasks if they had rich early social play. Neves adds that we can also build oral language itself, not just rely on social exposure.
Cui et al. (2023) list dozens of autism language tricks. The EBI/matrix combo Neves used could slide into that toolbox for any child who needs generative speech, hearing or not.
Why it matters
You now have a cheap, scripted way to grow spoken sentences in deaf or hard-of-hearing kids. No fancy software. Just pictures, a word grid, and quick equivalence tests. Add this to your plan when speech therapy stalls or when the child keeps saying the same three rote lines.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Pick three nouns and three verbs, make a 3×3 grid, and run a 5-min matching-to-sample trial before lunch.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Children who use cochlear implants (CI) and who are readers usually produce more accurate speech in response to text than to pictures. Equivalence-based instruction (EBI) can be a route to establish functional interdependence between these verbal operants. The present study investigated whether children with CI who read would improve speech accuracy when tacting pictures of scenes after EBI that included dictated sentences, pictures of scenes, and printed sentences. This study evaluated whether teaching verbal relations to diagonal sentences from a matrix with subject-verb-object combinations promoted recombinative generalization to untrained sentences. Participants were three children with CI with a more accurate speech when reading print than when tacting pictures of scenes. They were taught to select pictures of scenes in response to dictated sentences (AB) by matching-to-sample (MTS) and to construct printed sentences in response to dictated sentences (AE) by constructed-response-matching-to-sample (CRMTS). Speech production in response to print (CD) and in response to pictures of scenes (BD) were probed for both trained and untrained sentences, using a multiple baseline design across participants. All participants learned the trained relations, showed emergence of derived relations, and improved speech accuracy when tacting pictures of scenes. They were able to recombine sentence components and tact novel pictures using untrained sentences from the matrix. These results indicate that speech accuracy and generative sentence production can be improved in children with CI from interventions that incorporate EBI and matrix training. CAAE#01454412.0.0000.5441 registered 01/29/2013.
Psicologia, Reflexão e Crítica : revista semestral do Departamento de Psicologia da UFRGS, 2018 · doi:10.1186/s41155-018-0095-y