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Children who are deaf are now being identified earlier and are receiving cochlear implants at younger ages, many before their first birthday. Despite language delays, these children present with the potential to achieve educational outcomes commensurate with their hearing peers if given educational placements that are both appropriate and least restrictive. Inclusive classrooms with carefully crafted curriculum and highly trained faculty can support these children as they achieve language, cognitive, and social/emotional norms. Children with cochlear implants may require extra support for cognitive skills developing in concert with language, including attention and memory (Pisoni et al., 1999; see references online), and social support during everyday interactions with children with normal hearing.
Much has been written about the perceptual development of young children following implantation (Tomblin et al., 1999). Speech perception and production are regarded as primary benefits of cochlear implantation (Cheng, Grant, & Niparko, 1999; Geers, Brenner, & Davidson, 2003). As a consequence, early research on the developing skills of children with cochlear implants focused on these skills. Later research shifted to examine broader goals: language development, rate of language gain, literacy, and academic achievement. Early studies compared children with cochlear implants to children with deafness using other sensory aids (see Kirk, 2000 for a review), but in more recent research studies, children with hearing loss are no longer the comparison group. Current research is increasingly comparing children with cochlear implants to peers with normal hearing, reflecting heightened performance expectations empowered by technological advances and earlier identification and subsequent early implantation.
Language and literacy outcomes have shown a greater rate of improvement for children using cochlear implants than for children with similar hearing losses using hearing aids (Geers, 2003; Connor & Zwolan, 2004). In general, children with cochlear implants had superior scores on language achievement measures (Tomblin et al., 1999) and literacy (Connor & Zwolan, 2004). Given early implantation, these children are beginning to develop auditory skills and language at a similar rate to hearing peers (Robbins et al., 2004). There is even some evidence that with early implantation it is possible to accelerate the rate of language learning in order to close the gap between children's chronological age and their demonstrated language age (Kirk et al., 2003). Although The River School provides intensive post-implant aural rehabilitation, the children in these studies had varying levels of intervention.
Francis and colleagues (1999) noted a trend toward mainstream educational placement and diminishing levels of support services required by children after implantation. They found that nearly 75% of children with cochlear implants were being educated in full-time mainstream placements some four years after surgery.
-Nancy Mellon
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