Deafness and Specific Learning Disorder: towards a possible comorbidity

Most children and adolescents with deafness receive one or two cochlear implants (CIs). Despite the CI expanding the potential for auditory rehabilitation in deaf children, the improvements in language and literacy skills of some of these children do not align with the expected outcomes. As the main research question, we wondered if the reading and writing deficits reported in some deaf children with CIs may be characterized as a domain-specific learning disorder, rather than only a consequence of deafness. Thus, we analyzed the academic discrepancies, in both reading and writing, between two groups of deaf children with early CI.

Three prelingually deaf children with CI and with unexplained disproportionate learning disorders (Deaf+LD group) were compared to control deaf children with similar clinical history, age at CI implantation and auditory experience (Deaf group). The Deaf+LD group was also matched on chronological age to three hearing children with Specific Learning Disorder (SLD group).

The results showed that the three cases of the Deaf+LD group demonstrated severe reading and writing deficits, with performances significantly below the age level, similarly to children of the SLD group. By contrast, the three children of the Deaf group demonstrated normal reading and writing abilities.

We suggested considering the possibility of comorbidity between deafness and SLD. This hypothesis was supported by the specific features of the language profile that justify such an association; in fact, deaf children with presumed SLD have profiles much more similar to hearing children with SLD than to other deaf children.