Assessment of school-age language skills in pediatric cochlear implant users

This study aims to evaluate the performance of school-age language skills and recognition of speech sounds with cochlear implanted children. Expected success from cochlear implant is not only acquisition the simple daily spoken language, but also all the skills based upon the language (form, content, use). It is important that evaluating the school-age language skills of cochlear implanted children and accordingly developing follow-up & intervention programs. In this study, 70 voluntary children participants (35 girls, 35 boys) who are between 4-years and 8-years 11-months, have cochlear implant and have no additional disability were included. Turkish version of "Test of Language Development Primary Fourth edition (TOLD-P4)" and "Phoneme Recognition Test (PRT)" were performed by the participants. Percentage values and descriptive terms of all sub-tests of TOLD-P4 and index values, descriptive terms of combined performance were identified as evaluation criteria. When the findings were analyzed according to our hypotheses, it was stated that early intervention to hearing loss is very important in terms of development of auditory perception and skills based upon the language. It was observed that FM system usage has the advantage on complicated skills based upon language. It was found that existence of residual hearing before cochlear implantation has a favorable effect on functional hearing and language development in the future. According to way of usage, bilateral users were good at receiving the linguistic cues and hence language skills, since they could take advantages of binaural hearing. A significant statistically correlation between PRT and Word Identification, Phonemic Analysis, Articulation Tests from sub-tests of TOLD-P4 was found. It is thought that these obtained data provide an opinion for other studies which will be done at different groups with used the same evaluation tools in this study. Key Words: Cochlear Implant, School-aged Language Development, Phoneme Recognition, Children, TOLD-P4, PRT