Children's Cochlear Implant – Second Language

Second language learning in very young children has historically been viewed with skepticism among both experts in the field of language development and educators. Critics believed that learning a second language interferes with mastering the primary language and can lead to language impairment. These same beliefs have led clinicians and educators to discourage second oral language learning among pediatric cochlear implant recipients who are being trained in oral communication. Because normal hearing children were assumed incapable of mastering two languages without negative consequences, a second oral language might confuse deaf babies whose auditory and language learning systems were already compromised.

This is not an unreasonable position. The ability of infants and children to develop oral language has been found to be severely compromised by the existence of a profound hearing loss. They have severe deficits and delays, and in some cases deviant development in receptive and expressive areas of oral English language, including vocabulary, grammar, concepts, and pragmatics. Therefore, it is not surprising that rehabilitation personnel are reluctant to recommend bilingual language environments for children using cochlear implants.

However, a team of researchers assert that cochlear implants offer broader access to the auditory signal than do hearing aids, providing children with more of the perceptual and linguistic tools necessary to develop spoken language. Additionally, they believed that some hearing impaired children with cochlear implants could develop oral competence in more than one spoken language. The research team explored the development, competence, and variables that might account for children using cochlear implants becoming proficient in two or more spoken languages.

The authors of “Second Language Capabilities in Children with Cochlear Implants” are Susan B. Waltzman PhD, Janet E. Green, and Noel L. Cohen MD, from the New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY; Amy McConkey Robbins from Communication Consulting Services, Indianapolis, IN; and Yael Bat-Chava PhD, at the League for the Hard of Hearing, New York, NY. Their findings were presented May 10, 2002, at the Annual Meeting of the American Otological Society being held at the Boca Raton Club and Resort, Boca Raton, FL.

Methodology: Eighteen congenitally profoundly hearing impaired oral bilingual children who received cochlear implants younger than age five participated in this study. The mean age at time of implantation and mean length of deafness was 2.5 years, and the mean length of device usage was 4.5 years. All of the children were exposed to one or more spoken languages at home. English was the primary language for all but two of the children whose principal language was Yiddish. The parents provided the main exposure to the other languages with the school being a secondary stimulant. Oral language was the sole mode of communication for all of the children.

Routine audiometric procedures with and without earphones were used to determine the severity and type of hearing loss. Auditory brain stem testing was performed when necessary and appropriate. Age appropriate open set phoneme, word and sentence recognition tests were administered preoperatively and postoperatively to cochlear implantation. Each subject was administered a standardized test to assess English language abilities.

In the study, the examiner observed each child conversing in the non-English language with the parent fluent in that language and asked a series of structured interview questions. The the examiner rated the child’s non-English language skills in five communication domains: comprehension, fluency, vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar.

Results: The data obtained revealed pediatric cochlear implant recipients could develop some level of competence in a second spoken language in addition to their primary language. Equally important, and contrary to previous research, was a finding that the majority of the children showed age appropriate receptive and/or expressive language abilities in their primary language commensurate with normal hearing children. The study also revealed no significant difference between the perception abilities of the children who did learn to speak a second language versus those who reportedly did not. No speech processing strategy nor speech perception performance post-implantation could effectively explain the difference in second language acquisition between these two groups.

The researchers believed that auditory skills, multiple disabilities, home language environment, parental involvement and motivation, school setting, and language intervention are possible underlying bases for the bilingual development in this group. To assess whether open-set speech perception would account for bilingual acquisition, they examined the test results of nine children exposed to a second language but who did not attain any level of oral competence. They found:

Two of the most apparent determinants appear to relate to living environment and parental desires. Fifteen of the 18 children in the bilingual group experience a second (and third) language in the home, 14 attend bilingual schools; seven receive language intervention in the second language in addition to therapy in their first language, and two are considered to manifest some form of a learning disability. In most cases, parents, relatives, and teachers use the primary and secondary languages, often interchangeably, when communicating with the children.

The parents of all nine children in the non-bilingual group, report communicating with the children only in the primary language and never use a second language in the home. The families do not emphasize or require the child to learn the second language, and the children receive language/speech therapy only in the primary language.

Conclusions: Some pediatric cochlear implant recipients are capable of oral age-appropriate language skills and the acquisition of multiple spoken languages. Further research is underway to explore the contributing factors to these findings.

Also see; digital hearing aids.

About The Author:

Jen Bead is a successful author and regular contributor to http://www.digital-hearing-aids-n-protection.com. Finding out more about hearing loss, so you can choose the digital hearing aids or therapy that is necessary.