Epilogue: Major Findings, Conclusions and Implications for Deaf Education

(Ear & Hearing 2003;24;121S–125S) It has now been well established that cochlear implants are reliable and effective devices for significantly improving access to sound for deaf individuals. This study, titled “Cochlear Implants and Education of the Deaf Child,” addresses the impact of cochlear implants on deaf children. The focus of this supplement is on describing the effects of cochlear implants on prelingually deaf children and determining the factors that have a significant impact on their speech perception, speech production, language and reading skills. Half of the children included in the study were enrolled in oral programs with a focus on listening and spoken language and half were enrolled in total communication programs using sign and speech together. The articles in this supplement summarize the most comprehensive study of deaf children with cochlear implants ever reported and the data have implications for instruction/therapy for deaf children and expectations for their development. It is comprehensive in terms of the size of the sample of deaf students, the breadth of areas investigated and the completeness of the test battery in each area. The purpose of the study was to determine the child, family, implant and educational characteristics that account for differences in achievement for 181 implanted children in five outcome skill areas: speech perception, speech production, spoken language, total language and reading. One goal was to determine the correlation among sample characteristics and outcome skills, which indicates the strength of their relationships. Another goal was to determine the extent each sample characteristic contributed independently to differences in performance outcome. The primary goal of the study was to determine the impact of the educational environment and communication method on each of the outcome skills after accounting for the impact of child, family and implant characteristics on the outcome skills. A major strength of the study was the characteristics of the 181 children studied. The group was homogeneous in terms of age at testing (all were 8 to 9 yr old), onset of deafness (all prelingually deaf), absence of other identified handicapping conditions, age at implant (all before or shortly after their 5th birthday) and family characteristics (English speaking families and parents with normal hearing). The conclusions may be appropriately generalized to children who share or approximate these characteristics. The group was geographically and educationally diverse. Participants came from 33 different states and five Canadian provinces. They represented both public and private schools, mainstream and special education classes and educational programs ranging from exclusively oral emphasizing spoken language skills to total communication programs emphasizing sign language. Thus, the results reported are not attributable to any particular center or type of rehabilitation program.