Acoustic environment and language skills in children with cochlear implant

Objective 1)To analyses the linguistic development before and post cochlear implant activation in children who received a cochlear implant in their first 3 years of life 2) To analyse the value of listening-data logged in the speech processor on the spontaneous production of children who received a cochlear implant in their first 3 years of life. Methods Ten children with profound congenital sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) were included in the study. The mean age at CI activation was 20.5 months (SD +/- 3.8; range 13-33). Two sessions of game of 20 minutes each, one before surgery and one after three and six months after cochlear implant activation. The ALB protocol (Olswang et al., 1987) was adopted for the evaluation of spontaneous production of children. The sessions were recorded and transcribed. The overall data of average daily use and acoustic scene-analyses were extracted from Data Logging system after 3 months of CI activation. Results All the children have increased the spontaneous production, showing a decrease in the vocalizations in favor of an increase in the varied lallation and first words A significant positive correlation was found between speech in quiet exposure time at low loudness level (< 70 dB) and spontaneous production. Conclusion The listening environment can influence the speech development in children who received Cochlear implant in their 3 years of life.