NEW YORK, Mar 14 (Reuters Health) -- The earlier a deaf child receives a cochlear implant, the better the child's speech development, report researchers at the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis.
A cochlear implant is an electronic device that is implanted in the inner ear of a profoundly deaf person. It stimulates the auditory nerve and allows the individual to be aware of sounds.
Although the device does not allow hearing-impaired people to hear speech clearly, being aware of sounds appears to help language development, the researchers explain. And this can help narrow the gap in language skills hearing-impaired children experience compared with their hearing peers, the authors suggest.
While hearing-impaired youngsters typically show delays in the acquisition of language skills, cochlear implants can improve their developmental abilities, according to the report in the March issue of Psychological Science.
"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," lead researcher Dr. Mario A. Svirsky, said in a statement released by the University.
The gap between a hearing-impaired child's age and the typical age level of their language abilities often grows over time, according to the authors, meaning that these children fall further and further behind. But the study results show that the implants can halt that progressive disparity.
"In other words, the gap stops growing," Svirsky said.
Although previous studies have indicated that cochlear implants aid the development of speech perception and production in children who were deaf since birth or prior to language acquisition, cochlear implantation remains controversial in some circles.
Svirsky and his colleagues write that the organization Deaf World -- which advocates the use of sign language as the primary language for deaf people and the view that deafness is not a handicap -- and its allies continue to criticize pediatric cochlear implantation and question the practice's success at boosting language development and acquisition.
"If it could be shown that cochlear implants enhance language development, in addition to just speech perception, this would be compelling evidence for the effectiveness of cochlear implants in the pediatric population," the investigators write in the article to explain their research motivations.
"Although we agree that the parents of children seeking cochlear implants should seriously consider the perspective of the Deaf community... we also think that parents have a right to make decisions on behalf of their children," Svirsky's team adds.
The researchers compared over time the English language abilities of children who received cochlear implants with the capabilities of profoundly prelingually deaf children who used conventional hearing aids and were examined in a previous study.
Although the language development of children with cochlear implants studied was less advanced than hearing children, their developmental rate exceeded predicted rates for unimplanted deaf children, the study findings indicate. The children's language skills were assessed at about 4 months prior to implantation and at 6-month intervals afterward up to 30 months.
After 2-1/2 years, the cumulative language acquisition gains of the implanted children were close to rates anticipated for children with normal hearing, the team found.
Svirsky and colleagues conclude "that cochlear implants have a significant beneficial effect on the development of English language in profoundly deaf children" and that "the best performers" among children with implants "not only achieved very high levels of speech perception, but also seemed to be developing an oral linguistic system based largely on auditory input from a cochlear implant."
http://www.allhealth.com/allhealth/news/0,4800,5001_174058,00.html
