Social conversational skills development in early implanted children.

Area of Science:

• Pediatric audiology and developmental psychology.
• Investigating early pragmatic development in children with hearing loss.

Background:

• Social conversational skills, including assertiveness and responsiveness, are crucial for early childhood development.
• Understanding these skills in children with profound sensorineural hearing loss who receive cochlear implants is essential.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine the development of social conversational skills in early-implanted children.
• To explore the relationship between these skills, lexical development, and language-related variables.

Main Methods:

• A prospective, observational study of 28 children with congenital profound sensorineural hearing loss.
• Assessed social-conversational skills and lexical development 12 months post-device activation.
• Analyzed correlations with age at implantation and preoperative hearing thresholds.

Main Results:

• Early-implanted children showed assertiveness and responsiveness scores within the normal range compared to hearing peers.
• Younger age at cochlear implant activation correlated with higher social-conversational skill scores.
• Strong positive correlations were found between social-conversational skills and lexical development.

Conclusions:

• Children receiving cochlear implants early develop social conversational skills similar to their hearing peers.
• The study highlights a significant link between social-conversational skills and lexical development.
• Better preoperative hearing predicted enhanced assertive abilities in these children.