Conversational fluency of children who use cochlear implants

Area of Science:

• Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology
• Pediatric Communication Disorders
• Hearing Loss Rehabilitation

Background:

• Children with significant hearing loss often struggle with conversational fluency, leading to communication breakdowns and silence.
• Assessing conversational fluency is crucial for understanding the challenges faced by young cochlear implant users.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the oral conversational fluency of young cochlear implant users.
• To compare their performance with children with normal hearing.
• To correlate fluency measures with communication skills and child characteristics.

Main Methods:

• 181 cochlear implant users and 24 normal-hearing children engaged in oral conversations.
• Conversations were analyzed for communication breakdown, silence, and speaking time ratios.
• Subjective ratings from judges and objective measures (speech intelligibility, MLU) were collected.

Main Results:

• Cochlear implant users exhibited more communication breakdown and silence than normal-hearing children.
• Speech intelligibility and receptive language predicted communication breakdown.
• Judges rated children with less breakdown more favorably.

Conclusions:

• Educational programs should focus on explicit instruction to enhance conversational fluency.
• Communication therapy is essential for improving interaction and social perception.
• Objective measures are effective tools for assessing conversational fluency in this population.