Examining the communication skills of a young cochlear implant pioneer

The purpose of this longitudinal case study was to closely examine one deaf child’s experience with a cochlear implant and his speech, language, and communication skills from kindergarten through middle and high school using both developmental and sociocultural frameworks. The target child was one of the first children to receive a cochlear im-plant in the United States in 1988, when he was 5 years of age. The developmental analysis revealed that prior to re-ceiving a cochlear implant the child demonstrated profound delays in speech and language skill development. His speech and language skills grew slowly during the first 3–4 years following implantation, very rapidly from about 5 through 7 years postimplantation, then slowed to rates that were highly similar to same-age peers with normal hearing. The socio-cultural analysis revealed that the child’s communicative competence improved; that he used sign language but use of sign language decreased as his oral communication skills improved; that as his oral communication skills improved, the adults talked and directed the topic of conversation less frequently; and that topics became less concrete and more personal over time. The results of this study indicate that we may learn more about how to support children who use co-chlear implants by examining what they are saying as well as how they are saying it. Cochlear implants offer substantial usable hearing to deaf children and are one of the most important tech-nological breakthroughs in the field of biomedical engineering. Accumulating research on the speech and language skills of children who use cochlear im-plants has revealed that cochlear implants can have lasting beneficial effects on children’s speech percep-tion, oral language, and literacy development com-pared to children using conventional hearing aid