Language Development in Children with Profound and Prelingual Hearing Loss,.
The Annals of Otology, Rhinology and Laryngology; Dec 2000; Mario A. Svirsky.
Most children who are either born profoundly deaf, or become deaf before three years of age, fall significantly behind their hearing peers in all components of oral language: written, spoken, read and signed. Delays are seen regardless of whether the children used oral communication or total communication. Oral communication does not include the use of signs, and total communication uses both oral and sign language. .
It stands to reason then that a study of Stanford Achievement Test-Reading Comprehension scores of hearing impaired students, ages 8 to 18 years showed average reading comprehension levels below those of normal hearing third graders.
One of the most important goals of therapy and interventions with profoundly hearing impaired children is the development of an oral language. Both sides of the conflict regarding cochlear implants agree that one important measure of the effectiveness of the implant is whether or not it enhances the development of oral language. It is not adequate to simply document language improvement in children with cochlear implants, because even children with profound hearing loss who do not have cochlear implants exhibit limited improvements in language abilities over time. .
Previous studies have used different techniques to estimate the typical language development for children with cochlear implants. This study focused on children with profound and pre-lingual hearing loss who did not have a cochlear implant, providing us with an estimation of the improvements due to maturation and training. This study will be used in the future to determine whether the effect of cochlear implantation on language development exceeds the change in language development that would be expected from maturation and training alone.
