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Title:	Perception of Arabic phonemes among Malay deaf children with cochlear implant and normal hearing children
Authors:	Farheen Naz Anis (P68813)
Supervisor:	Cila Umat, Prof. Dr.
Keywords:	Hearing Disorders Cochlear Implants Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia -- Dissertations Dissertations, Academic -- Malaysia
Issue Date:	27-Sep-2022
Description:	Accurate perception of Arabic phonemes and corresponding graphemes is essential for learning to read Arabic scripts. Arabic script in Quran is recited by approximately 2.2 billion non-native speakers worldwide. The anecdotal report showed that Malay deaf children with a cochlear implant (CI), who acquired spoken native language and attended mainstream schools, had difficulties learning Arabic. Hence, the purpose of this study was to investigate the perception of Arabic phonemes and graphemes among the Malay deaf children with a CI and compared that to their peers with normal hearing (NH) and to determine whether the perceptual learning of non-native phonological features occur with training. Four studies (Studies I to IV) were designed to cover these objectives. Thirty-one children (11 Malay deaf children with a CI, 18 Malay NH children, and 2 Arabic native NH children) participated in different stages of this research. In Studies I and II, the perception of Arabic phonemes and phoneme-graphemes correspondence were determined, respectively, involving six CI and 13 NH children. The groups were matched for their hearing age (7 ± 1.03 years) and duration of exposure to Arabic sounds (2.7 ± 1.2 years). All the 28 Arabic phonemes as Consonant-Vowel /a/ (Ca) were presented randomly twice via a loudspeaker at approximately 65 dB SPL in a soundproof audiology room. Participants' tasks were to repeat the presented phonemes verbally and point to their associated graphemes on a laminated card sheet following each stimulus presentation. A bottom-up, customized software-based FizBil® training module was developed in Study III based on Studies I and II findings. The newly developed training software was tested in Study IV, which involved a 12-week training regime on CI child. Three children with CI participated, but only one completed the 12- week training regime. The perceptual scores (d-prime: d`) were measured at weeks 1 (pre-training), 6 (post-test I), and 12 (post-test II following five weeks of off-training. Studies I and II revealed that within the native Malay perceptual space, the CI participants did significantly poorer than NH children. CI participants did not have specified category formation for phonological and graphical features compared to the NH children. Therefore, the unfamiliar non-native phonemes (/ħ/, /tˁ/, /sˁ/ and /ʁ/) showed dispersed-uncategorized assimilation in the CI group and focalized and clustered-uncategorized assimilation in NH children. Based on the task, perception of phonemes through audition (i.e., verbal repetition task) was significantly easier than phoneme-graphemes correspondence i.e., pointing task for both study groups. The presence of dots on graphemes added further difficulties for readers with CI. Following the training with the FizBil® software, the negative baseline (d`=-2.04), which suggested perceptual confusions, improved to positive d` at post-test I (d`=1.56). The improvement of d` suggested the formation of phonological categories post-training. The positive d` maintained at post-test II (d`=1.07) suggesting retention of information. In summary, children with CI showed more confusion in perceiving Arabic sounds and the corresponding graphemes in auditory alone mode than the NH children. These results suggest different perceptual processing mechanisms may be involved in both groups. The perceptual learning of non-native phonological features might occur with bottom-up training. The significance of these findings is that a customized teachinglearning method should be utilized to facilitate the CI children to learn the Arabic scripts through audition,Ijazah Doktor Falsafah
Pages:	277
Publisher:	UKM, Kuala Lumpur
Appears in Collections:	Faculty of Health Sciences / Fakulti Sains Kesihatan

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