A recent research report published by a team at Indiana University provides more evidence that the younger a hearing-impaired child receives a cochlear implant, the quicker he or she is to acquire spoken language. The researchers tested 70 children four months before they received cochlear implants and again at six, 12, 18, 24 and 30 months after implantation. "Children who are born deaf or who become profoundly deaf before the age of three typically experience significant delays in their acquisition of English language skills," said Mario A.Svirsky, associate professor of otolaryngology at the IU School of Medicine in Indianapolis. "The gap between a hearing-impaired child's chronological age and his language age typically continues to increase as the child grows older. However, we have found that when a child receives a cochlear implant, the child begins to develop language skills at about the same rate as a child with normal hearing. In other words, the gap stops growing. Some children with cochlear implants develop language at a faster rate and actually start to approach the linguistic levels of their age peers who have normal hearing."
Posted by David at 03:33 PM on May 15, 2005 in COCHLEAR IMPLANTS, COPING
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