Investigation of the functional hearing, social adaptation and motor coordination performances of preschool children with cochlear implants

The purpose of this dissertation was to evaluate the functional hearing, language development, social adaptation skills, and motor coordination skills of preschool children with cochlear implants. It is important to assess these areas in the preschool period, which are thought to develop and change one from another, to ensure the adaptation of cochlear implant users to primary school. With the consent of the parents/carers, this dissertation included 14 girls and 16 boys with cochlear implants (between the ages of 4 and 6 years 11 months, and without any additional disability). Turkish version of "Test of Early Language Development-Fourth edition (TELD-4)", Turkish version of "Functioning after Pediatric Cochlear Implantation (FAPCI)", the Social Skills Evaluation Scale (age 4-6) and the "Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency- 2 (BOT-2)" along with its subtests, "Manual Dexterity" and "Bilateral Coordination" tests were administered to participants. As a result; indicate that the correlation between Turkish version of "FAPCI", total score and the Social Skills Evaluation Scale total score, the correlation between Turkish version of "TELD-4" total score and Turkish version of "FAPCI" total score, and the correlation between Turkish version of "TELD-4" subtest scores and the Social Skills Evaluation Scale scores were found to be significant (p<0,05). There was no statistically significant relationship between the the Social Skills Evaluation Scale and BOT-2 subtests, but a significant correlation was found between the "FAPCI" total scores and the BOT-2 "Manual Dexterity" subtest scores (p<0,05). There was also a significant correlation between the BOT-2 "Manual Dexterity" subtest score and the Turkish version of "TELD-4" receptive language, expressive language, and degrees of disorder (p<0,05). In the literature, there is no study that has examined simultaneously the interaction between the functional hearing, social adaptation, and motor coordination of pre-school children with cochlear implants. In order to fill this gap, the first goal is to organize and implement training programs for the fields that are found to interact and thus minimize potential problems.