Impact Of Cochlear Implantation Research Articles

Cochlear Implants: The Young People's Perspective

Cochlear implantation is a relatively new procedure, which has already had significant impact on the lives of many profoundly deaf children and adults, in providing useful hearing to those unable to benefit significantly from hearing aids. After 16 years of cochlear implantation in the United Kingdom, there is now a body of evidence covering a range of outcomes, much of which covers perceptual and linguistic outcomes. This study looks at the impact of cochlear implantation on a group of 29 young people aged 13-16 years, using a semistructured questionnaire. It examines issues from the perspective of the young people themselves, including their understanding of and degree of satisfaction with the way their implant works for them, their social and communication abilities and choices, their educational challenges, and their identity. It concludes that the young people in this group feel positive toward their cochlear implants and the decisions made on their behalf by parents. Many have a flexible attitude to communication modes and an identity which is not fixed in terms of conventional descriptors.

The impact of cochlear implants on young deaf children: new methods to assess cognitive and behavioral development.

Much evidence suggests that, early in life, auditory input and communication are essential for the normal development of language, cognition, and behavior. Thus, deaf children, who experience significant disruptions in auditory input, are likely to show delays not only in the production of oral language but in other important aspects of development such as visual attention and behavioral control. Cochlear implants have shown tremendous promise in restoring auditory information to deaf children and concomitant improvements in speech recognition and production. However, little is known about how cochlear implants affect psychological variables. In this multisite trial, we assess the effects of cochlear implants on a range of developmental outcomes, including visual attention, problem-solving skills, symbolic play, and social adjustment. Measuring these constructs in young children, primarily younger than 2 years, has presented a number of unique challenges. In this article, we describe the methods used to assess these variables in young children and present preliminary findings comparing joint attention and symbolic play skills in a small sample of age-matched deaf and hearing children. As expected, deaf children performed more poorly than hearing children on measures of attention and symbolic play. As auditory input is restored via a cochlear implant, we predict that significant improvements in these variables will be observed.