Language development in children with cochlear implants in both ears early in life 

This is a summary in Norwegian of an exciting research article about Cochlear Implants (CI) and language development in young children. The article summary is written by Anne-May Førland, Audiograph Eikholt

English title: Long-Term Language Development in Children With Early Simultaneous Bilateral Cochlear Implants

This study examines the language development of 21 Norwegian children who received Cochlear Implants in both ears simultaneously between the ages of 5 and 18 months. The aim of the study was to investigate what influenced the language development of children with CI. 

Language development for children with CI

Previous research shows that children who receive CIs in both ears early in life, preferably before the age of one, have the best possible conditions for developing good spoken language. Receiving CIs in both ears at the same time is also an advantage in terms of language development. In Norway, all children with congenital deafness or severe hearing loss have been offered CIs in both ears since 2004. 

This study followed all children without additional disabilities who received CIs in both ears simultaneously in Norway between 2004 and 2007. The children were between 5 and 18 months old when they received the CIs. A total of 21 children were followed up for 6 years after surgery. Two of the children had problems with the CIs and had to be removed from the study, leaving the researchers with 19 children. 

All the children grew up in a predominantly spoken-language environment and all had follow-up from an audiopedagogue. They had different types of CIs, and all but one used their CIs all day. After kindergarten, all the children started regular school. 

During the six years after the children received their CI, a number of tests were carried out on the children. The tests examined, among other things, the child's intelligence, speech perception, speech ability, vocabulary and grammar. The same tests were carried out on 19 children with normal hearing. This was done in order to compare the results of the children with CI and the children with normal hearing. 

The parents of the children with CI also answered questionnaires about the child's language development, the family's socio-economic status and communication methods. 

The researchers found several results: 

• 11 of the children received CI before the age of one. 8 received CI between the ages of one and two. On average, the children who received CI first had better language development than the children who received CI later. In terms of language development, it is therefore an advantage to get a CI as early as possible, preferably before the age of one. 
• In the first four years after the children received a CI, there was a steady positive language development on average. Approximately four years after receiving a CI, the children's general language skills were almost as good as those of children with normal hearing. In other words, the children with CIs had almost caught up with the language development of the normal-hearing children. 4 to 6 years after receiving a CI, the children's language development was more mixed and not as good as the language development of children with normal hearing. 
• The study shows that it is important to test language development in children with CI over a long period of time. There is a need for more research in this field, and studies involving more than 19 children are needed. 

Source

The article is originally written in English and can be found in its entirety at this link: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32079817/ 

Authors: Ona Bø Wie, Janne von Koss Torkildsen, Stefan Schauber, Tobias Busch and Ruth Litovsky. 

Published: 2020

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