Language evaluation in children with pre-lingual hearing loss and cochlear implant

The cochlear implant is an effective device for children with severe and/or profound prelingual hearing loss, since it provides considerable improvement in oral language acquisition through the auditory pathway. The use of a cochlear implant contributes to the development of auditory perception, favoring the acquisition of the linguistic processes related to communication skills, which might have a positive effect on other areas of development.

The aim of this study was to verify the performance of children using cochlear implants for expressive and receptive oral language.

This was a prospective cross-sectional study that used the following tests: Child language test in the phonology, vocabulary, fluency and pragmatics areas, and the Peabody picture vocabulary test. Thirty children participated in this study, of both genders, aged between 36 and 72 months, with severe and/or profound bilateral sensorineural hearing loss, without other impairments and users of unilateral cochlear implant with full electrode insertion for a minimum of 12 months.

The longer duration of the cochlear implant use, the younger age at surgery and the better performance in the auditory perception of speech influenced the performance in expressive and receptive oral language. Even though when compared to the normative language acquisition process, the results showed that these children had patterns of linguistic skills that are below their chronological age; the results indicate that these children are developing expressive and receptive oral language skills, and this is the outcome that should be taken into account in this study.

The longer duration of the cochlear implant use, the younger age at surgery and the better performance in the auditory perception of speech influenced the performance in expressive and receptive oral language skills, but not in all the studied semantic categories.