Project 3 - Environment and enhancement of language skills

Nowadays, children with hearing impairment are likely to be exposed to a variety of communicative situations and to use a diversity of communication approaches and strategies for interaction in different environmental contexts. Project 3 will evaluate how individual language and learning resources (i.e. verbal and non-verbal cognitive abilities, communication strategies) affect spoken and written communication and facilitate daily-life interaction according to the opportunities and constraints of the communicative environment (i.e. multilinguistic and multicultural settings, interactional support within the family). Moreover, in the project Environment and enhancement of language skills, researchers will examine how such diverse language skills and communicative repertoires can be assessed.

Project 3 will be lead the Université libre de Bruxelles. The contributing beneficiaries will be the Centre Comprendre et Parler, the CNRS-LPNC lab at the Université Grenoble-Alpes, and the University of Leeds. The partner organisations involved are the Bradford Teaching Hospitals and the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Grenoble Alpes. Five tasks, focusing on different aspects of communication skills in children with hearing impairment, will be undertaken. The first two tasks deal with online communication in multilinguistic, multicultural, and multisensory environments, combining studies and evaluation of daily-life interactions and language repertoires (Topic 3.1 & Topic 3.2). The next two tasks are focused on spelling (Topic 3.3) and intelligibility (Topic 3.4) skills and on their potential predictors. Finally, Topic 3.5 will assess speech perception in relation to sensory-motor interactions and familial support.