Narrative spoken language skills in severely hearing impaired school-aged children with cochlear implants

Cochlear implants have a significant positive effect on spoken language development in severely hearing impaired children. Previous work in this population has focused mostly on the emergence of early-developing language skills, such as vocabulary. The current study aims at comparing narratives, which are more complex and later-developing spoken language skills, of a contemporary group of profoundly deaf school-aged children using cochlear implants (n=66, median age=8 years 3 months) with matched normal hearing peers. Results show that children with cochlear implants demonstrate good results on quantity and coherence of the utterances, but problematic outcomes on quality, content and efficiency of retold stories. However, for a subgroup (n=20, median age=8 years 1 month) of deaf children without additional disabilities who receive cochlear implantation before the age of 2 years, use two implants, and are raised with one spoken language, age-adequate spoken narrative skills at school-age are feasible. This is the first study to set the goals regarding spoken narrative skills for deaf children using cochlear implants.