A comparative study of speech development between deaf children with cochlear implants who have been educated with spoken or spoken+sign language.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: To compare speech development following unilateral cochlear implant (CI) between a group of prelingually deaf children who have been educated exclusively using spoken language and another group who have used two languages (spoken and sign language). DESIGN: A simple group quasi-experimental design was used with a control group. METHODS: The sample comprised 7 girls and 11 boys, aged between 4 and 8 years old, who received a CI between the ages of 15 months and 5 years old. The sample was divided into two groups, G1-bilingual and G2-spoken language. In both groups, aspects such as speech intelligibility, receptive vocabulary, psycho-linguistic skills, adaptive behaviour and behavioural problems were measured. RESULTS: The children in Group 1 (bilingual) had better verbal and manual expression whereas those in Group 2 (spoken) achieved better results in terms of speech intelligibility, auditory reception and grammatical closure. These differences were confirmed statistically using Analysis of Variance. No significant differences were observed in relation to receptive vocabulary, social and communicative skills, visual reception, auditory and visual association, visual closure and visual or auditory sequential memory. CONCLUSION: The development of speech in these children is irrefutable; however, this study contributes a paradoxical element to the discussion: the bilingual group obtained better results in verbal fluency, hence these children should be able to evoke a greater number of words than those educated using just spoken language.