Language and Literacy Skills in Children with Cochlear Implants: Past and Present Findings

Before cochlear implants, children born with severe-to-profound hearing loss typically faced lifetimes of greatly diminished language abilities. As soon as implants became available, dramatic changes in those expectations were realized: roughly half the children who received implants began demonstrating language skills within the typical range, defined as better than one standard deviation below the mean of children with normal hearing. Although this finding is generally reported for studies involving young children, many studies involve children across a broad age range, making it difficult to evaluate developmental change. This chapter provides two novel insights into language acquisition for children with cochlear implants. First, we review outcomes for children in recent studies, thus providing an overview of how children are faring at present with cochlear implants. Second, we present outcomes for a single sample of children on the same measures collected at two discrete ages, thus providing an assessment of developmental change.