The Direct-to-Semantics Cross-Modal Compensatory Mechanism in Sublexical Processing Among Children With Cochlear Implants.

Authors

Boquan Liu

Published in

Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR. Pages 1-10. Nov 10, 2026. Epub Nov 10, 2026.

Abstract

This study investigated the rapid sublexical processing mechanisms of Chinese children with cochlear implants (CIs) to understand how early altered auditory experience shapes cross-modal reading compensation.
Using an unmasked priming lexical decision paradigm (stimulus onset asynchrony = 150 ms) and a structural-violation pseudocharacter judgment task, 30 children with CIs were compared with 30 age-matched children with normal hearing (NH). Reaction times (RTs) and accuracy were analyzed using linear and generalized linear mixed-effects models.
Although children with NH demonstrated relative reliance on orthographic-phonological-semantic activation, children with CIs exhibited a highly specialized and asymmetrical processing pattern. Specifically, phonetic priming was absent in the CI group, indicating markedly attenuated sublexical phonetic decoding. Conversely, children with CIs demonstrated a substantial semantic facilitation effect (> 130 ms) that drastically amplified as whole-character frequency decreased. Furthermore, children with CIs incurred significantly higher cognitive costs (prolonged RTs and higher error rates) when processing highly similar pseudocharacters with spatial position conflicts.
Driven by their altered auditory experience, children with CIs adaptively deploy a direct-to-semantics visual capture strategy, heavily reallocating finite cognitive resources toward semantic radicals. Although this structural reorganization successfully compensates for phonological imprecision, it entails a functional trade-off, rendering them susceptible to spatial structural interference. These neurobehavioral findings challenge traditional phonological deficit-driven educational models, providing evidence for adaptive interventions prioritizing morphological-semantic training and whole-character visual templates.

PMID:
43008083
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 11 Nov 2026.

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