Reading comprehension in Dutch school-aged children with cochlear implants

Abstract

Title. Reading comprehension in Dutch school-aged children with cochlear implants. Background. Reading comprehension is an important predictor of school performance. Although previous studies reported better reading comprehension for children with cochlear implants (CI) compared with deaf children without CI, their performance was still lagging behind that of hearing children. Today children receive CI at a much younger age, which is associated with improved speech perception, and enhanced spoken language development. Therefore, it is hypothesized that for a substantial part age-appropriate reading comprehension scores are feasible. Aim. To examine reading comprehension in Dutch school-aged children with prelingual severe to profound hearing loss who received CI before the age of 3, and the variance in their performance. Methods. Reading comprehension was assessed in twenty-four children with CI, aged 7 to 12 years, with a mean age at implantation of 1;07 years. Associations with reading skills at word level, word knowledge, verbal memory, speech perception in challenging listening situations, and with several child-related factors were examined. For comparisons with hearing children, reference data from the norm samples of the standardized tests were used. Results. Half of the children, who received CI before the age of 3, achieved age-appropriate reading comprehension scores. Children in mainstream education performed significant better than children in schools for deaf and hard-of-hearing children. 74% of the variance in reading comprehension could be explained by speech perception in challenging listening situations, educational placement, and a composite factor, extracted from reading skills at word level, word knowledge and verbal working memory. Conclusion. Many children who received CI before age 3, attending mainstream education, achieved reading comprehension scores similar to their hearing peers. Since reading comprehension is important for overall academic success, the prospects for the present population of children with CI are promising.