ORIGINAL RESEARCH published: 19 November 2019 doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02530 Edited by: Viveka Lyberg Åhlander, Åbo Akademi University, Finland Reviewed by: Johan H. M. Frijns, Leiden University Medical Center, Netherlands Christian Füllgrabe, Loughborough University, United Kingdom *Correspondence: Janne von Koss Torkildsen janneto@isp.uio.no Specialty section: This article was submitted to Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology Received: 30 April 2019 Accepted: 25 October 2019 Published: 19 November 2019 Citation: Torkildsen JvK, Hitchins A, Myhrum M and Wie OB (2019) Speech-in-Noise Perception in Children With Cochlear Implants, Hearing Aids, Developmental Language Disorder and Typical Development: The Effects of Linguistic and Cognitive Abilities. Front. Psychol. 10:2530. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02530 Speech-in-Noise Perception in Children With Cochlear Implants, Hearing Aids, Developmental Language Disorder and Typical Development: The Effects of Linguistic and Cognitive Abilities Janne von Koss Torkildsen 1 * , Abigail Hitchins 1,2 , Marte Myhrum 3,4 and Ona Bø Wie 1,3 1 Department of Special Needs Education, Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway, 2 Auditory Verbal UK, Oxon, United Kingdom, 3 Division of Head, Neck and Reconstructive Surgery, Department of Otorhinolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery, Oslo University Hospital, Oslo, Norway, 4 Institute of Clinical Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway Children with hearing loss, and those with language disorders, can have excellent speech recognition in quiet, but still experience unique challenges when listening to speech in noisy environments. However, little is known about how speech-in-noise (SiN) perception relates to individual differences in cognitive and linguistic abilities in these children. The present study used the Norwegian version of the Hearing in Noise Test (HINT) to investigate SiN perception in 175 children aged 5.5–12.9 years, including children with cochlear implants (CI, n = 64), hearing aids (HA, n = 37), developmental language disorder (DLD, n = 16) and typical development (TD, n = 58). Further, the study examined whether general language ability, verbal memory span, non-verbal IQ and speech perception of monosyllables and sentences in quiet were predictors of performance on the HINT. To allow comparisons across ages, scores derived from age- based norms were used for the HINT and the tests of language and cognition. There were significant differences in SiN perception between all the groups except between the HA and DLD groups, with the CI group requiring the highest signal-to-noise ratios (i.e., poorest performance) and the TD group requiring the lowest signal-to-noise ratios. For the full sample, language ability explained significant variance in HINT performance beyond speech perception in quiet. Follow-up analyses for the separate groups revealed that language ability was a significant predictor of HINT performance for children with CI, HA, and DLD, but not for children with TD. Memory span and IQ did not predict variance in SiN perception when language ability and speech perception in quiet were taken into account. The finding of a robust relation between SiN perception and general language skills in all three clinical groups call for further investigation into the mechanisms that underlie this association. Keywords: hearing in noise, speech in noise perception, children, hearing loss, cochlear implant, hearing aid, language ability, developmental language disorder Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 1 November 2019 | Volume 10 | Article 2530