Analyzing the Comprehension of Subject- Subject and Subject- Object Relative Clauses in Cochlear Implanted and Normal Hearing Children

In this study, the comprehension of Subject-Subject (S-S) and Subject-Object (S-O) relative clauses in cochlear implanted (CI) and Normal Hearing (NH) was compared and in order to recommend some improvement in the comprehension of these relative clauses, Three kinds of error were analyzed. At last the comprehension of S-S and S-O relative clauses was compared.
In order to evaluate the comprehension of S-S and S-O Relative clauses, a picture matched test was designed which contained four alternatives. One of the alternatives was correct response and the other three answers were Main Clause Error (MCE), Relative Clause Error (RCE) and Double Clause Error (DCE). In order to analyze data, SPSS 22 and Mann Whitney test were used.
Results demonstrated that there was a significant difference between CI and NH children in the comprehension of both kinds of relative clauses (p = 0/006). Moreover, CI children encountered with more difficulties in comprehension of S-O relative clauses and the percentage of all three kinds of errors increased.
Results revealed that CI did not comprehend just one part of relative clauses. In S-S relative clauses, the most common error was related to MCE which demonstrated that CI could not comprehend the relationship between subject and verb in main clause. The percentage of all errors in S-O relative clause in CI increased and comprehension of this kind of relative clauses was more difficult for CI. Based on the results, with more and earlier training to CI children, it can be tried to eliminate the above problems.