Sociopragmatic skills and speech intelligibility of children with cochlear implant

The cochlear implant is an individual hearing aid and is an electronic device by which deaf people can perceive as recognize or hear sound from environment. Despite the early implantation of a cochlear implant, variations in speech, language and communication skills may occur. Communication enables an individual to share information and be involved in society, where key elements are good speech intelligibility and well developed socio-pragmatic skills. In the theoretical part of master's thesis, we described area of hearing loss or defined deafness and hearing loss, cochlear implant and the role of parents, educators and speech-language therapists in communicating with children. The socio-pragmatic skills and the level of speech intelligibility of children with a cochlear implant are presented in greater details. The aim of the research in the empirical part of master's thesis was to determine the level of the development of socio-pragmatic skills and the level of speech intelligibility in deaf children with a cochlear implant in relation to different communication partners like educators, speech-language therapists and parents, and with regard to a child's hearing age. For the purpose of research, 25 deaf children with a cochlear implant (7 girls and 18 boys) aged from 20 months to 6 years and 10 months were included in the sample. Parents, educators, and speech-language therapists filled in the form for each child which included the scale speech intelligibility in context, the rating scale for socio-pragmatic skills, and a questionnaire which included general information about a child and his or her auditory status. In this research, we found out that there is difference in evaluation of socio-pragmatic skills between assessors (parents, educators, and speech-language pathologists), but statistically significant differences between assessors are only in assessing assertiveness. In assessing responsiveness, there are no statistically significant differences between the assessors. Even when assessing speech intelligibility, there are no differences between the assessor's ratings. The research showed that there is a statistically significant correlation between the hearing age of a child and his or her development of socio-pragmatic skills or degree of speech intelligibility