Language and academic outcomes of children with cochlear implants in an inclusive setting: Evidence from 18 years of data.

OBJECTIVE: This study examined outcomes in core and pragmatic language, receptive vocabulary, and academic skills in children with cochlear implants (CIs) enrolled in an inclusive educational setting. METHODS: Eighty-eight children with CIs were included in the analyses. Data was collected over an 18-year period, at six-month intervals for core language, vocabulary, and pragmatic skills and in kindergarten and second grade for academic skills. Kaplan-Meier analyses were used to estimate the median time to achieve age-appropriate scores. RESULTS: Results indicated the median time to obtain age-appropriate skills for children with CIs enrolled in our program was less than three years for core language and pragmatic skills and less than two years for vocabulary. Over 90% of the sample had academic skills in the average range in both kindergarten and second grade. DISCUSSION: This study shares outcomes of children with CIs who received consistent and intensive transdisciplinary intervention in an inclusive educational setting, revealing the trajectory required to obtain age-appropriate skills, when compared to normative data. CONCLUSION: Results were favorable, indicating that children with CIs in an inclusive program, with intensive intervention and strong language and social models, can develop skills commensurate with typically developing peers across a variety of core skills.

Parent-Child Interaction Therapy as a Behavior and Spoken Language Intervention for Young Children With Hearing Loss.

Purpose The importance of early intervention for fostering language in children with hearing loss has been well documented; those that facilitate parent engagement are particularly effective. Listening and spoken language outcomes among children with hearing loss continue to fall short compared to hearing peers, despite improvements in hearing technologies. The current study evaluated the effectiveness of parent-child interaction therapy (PCIT) as a behavioral intervention for children with hearing loss and its applicability as a language intervention. Method PCIT effectiveness was evaluated for children with hearing loss (PCIT treatment group: N = 18). For a subset of the treatment group (matched experimental group: n = 6), pretreatment and posttreatment language samples were compared to a matched control group ( n = 6). Results Significant changes were observed in parent skills and child behavior from pretreatment to posttreatment for the PCIT treatment group. A subset of the treatment group (matched experimental group) with available matched controls (matched control group) demonstrated a significant increase in utterances and a trend toward significant increase in receptive vocabulary compared to the control group. Conclusion PCIT is a promising intervention for children with hearing loss that empowers parents to engage in optimal indirect language stimulation, improves parent-child interactions, improves child behavior, and promotes spoken language skills.