Teaching a Child with Cochlear Implant to Read Words with Orthographic Difficulties

Abstract Considering the effects of reading on the accuracy of the speech of deaf and hard and hearing children and cochlear implants presented in the scientific literature, the main aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of Module 2 of the ALEPP software regarding teaching words with orthographic difficulties to a cochlear implanted child. The participant was a girl, had nine years of age, with profound bilateral and sensorineural hearing loss. The program aims to teach contingencies of the selection of printed words and syllables conditioned to dictated words and syllables of six different stimuli sets; each set contained 16 words, with a total of 96 teaching words and 64 control words. Probes of 160 words were interspersed with the teaching steps according to the multiple probe design. The participant learned to read the 96 taught words, controlled by the words’ minimal units. She presented maintenance of performance and reading generalization of the control words. The number of speech accuracy errors only decreased after the teaching intervention. The results replicated those of previous studies with orthographically easier words and future studies may explore the different types of training provided by the ALEPP and its effects on the accuracy of the speech of cochlear implanted children