2012 Volume 55 Issue 2 Pages 152-158
Our methodology was based on the neuropsychological findings on speech perception in children with Landau-Kleffner syndrome who showed pure word deafness. In our home-training program, combined use of residual hearing and sign language, accompanied by finger spelling was recommended to the parents to communicate with their deaf children. We believe that the emotionally stable relationship between the parents and their deaf children which is established through manual communications is indispensable to facilitate language acquisition in the deaf child.
Participants of the present study were 27 deaf children who had received cochlear implantation in preschool age. They included 15 children placed in regular primary schools, 10 children in schools for the deaf, one in a special support class attached to a regular school, with approval for postponement of school entry because of physical problems obtained for the remaining one.
The follow up studies made in April, 2011 demonstrated that although the children began to acquire language skills through sign language, the manual communication skills gradually changed to auditory-oral communication in 24 of the 27 children after cochlear implantation, while the remaining three continued to use sign language. One of the latter three had auditory neuropathy and the remaining two showed autistic behavioral disorder.
These findings suggest that as far as our top-down approach is concerned, manual communication does not interfere with the development of auditory-oral communication in children with cochlear implants.
