Early intervention vital for deaf children

5 December 2005

A new study shows that early intervention with cochlear implants can make a significant difference in auditory development in deaf children.

Researchers from the University of Maryland's Child Development Laboratory and Stanford University, in the USA, found that deaf children who have cochlear implants by the time they are two-and-a-half years old have the best chance of developing auditory abilities close to those of children with normal hearing.

"This study shows the power of early intervention," says Maryland Professor Nathan Fox. "We often hear the claim that the earlier you intervene the better, but there are preciously few data on human studies to support this. Our paper is novel in providing evidence for the claim."

The Maryland team studied children between the ages of four and 14, who have been deaf from birth and speak English as their primary language. All subjects also had a cochlear implant for at least a year. They were studied over an 18-month period.

"The children who had received the cochlear implants after the age of two-and-a-half did not do as well in the fusion of auditory and visual speech perception as the children who received the implant earlier," says Professor Fox.

The key to auditory development is in the ability to fuse auditory information (hearing) and visual information (lips moving, for example): a skill that is developed early in life, according to professor Fox. "We found that when the speech stimuli were incongruent (different information from auditory and visual channels) the children who received cochlear implants before the age of two-and-a-half did almost as well as normal hearing children," says Fox.

"The study shows that children are able to make use of the auditory information with remarkable success when they have a cochlear implant at a young age," says Efrat Schorr, a doctoral student in the Child Development Laboratory.

 University of Maryland press release