Classroom performance of children with cochlear implants in mainstream education.
OBJECTIVE
We compared classroom performance of children with a cochlear implant (CI) with that of their normal-hearing peers in mainstream education.


METHODS
Thirty-two CI children in mainstream education, congenitally or prelingually deaf, participated in this study, as did 37 hearing classmates. Their teachers filled out 2 questionnaires: the Assessment of Mainstream Performance (AMP) and the Screening Instrument for Targeting Educational Risk (SIFTER). A high Fletcher index and open-set speech perception scores were obtained.


RESULTS
The children with CIs scored above average on the AMP and sufficiently well in all but one area (communication) of the SIFTER questionnaire. Class rankings did not differ significantly between the CI students and their normal-hearing peers. Overall, the normal-hearing group outperformed the CI group. The classroom performance of CI children correlated negatively with duration of deafness and age at implantation. All longitudinal audiological data of the CI children showed improvement in open-set speech recognition.


CONCLUSIONS
Although the results are encouraging, the CI group scored significantly less well than their normal-hearing peers on most questionnaire domains of both the AMP and the SIFTER. The most important variables for the outcome in this study were age at implantation and duration of deafness.
Damen
Godelieve W J A
GW
Dept of Otorhinolaryngology, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center, Philips van Leydenlaan 15, PO Box 9101, 6500 HB, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
van den Oever-Goltstein
Marilène H L
MH
Langereis
Margreet C
MC
Chute
Patricia M
PM
Mylanus
Emmanuel A M
EA
D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003054:Cochlear Implants; D003638:Deafness / Q000523:psychology* / Q000534:rehabilitation; D004522:Educational Status; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008282:Mainstreaming, Education; D008297:Male; D019986:Persons with Hearing Disabilities / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires