title: A comparative study of speech development between deaf children with cochlear implants who have been educated with spoken or spoken+sign language.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To compare speech development following unilateral cochlear implant (CI) between a group of prelingually deaf children who have been educated exclusively using spoken language and another group who have used two languages (spoken and sign language).
  
  
  METHODS
  A simple group quasi-experimental design was used with a control group.
  
  
  METHODS
  The sample comprised 7 girls and 11 boys, aged between 4 and 8 years old, who received a CI between the ages of 15 months and 5 years old. The sample was divided into two groups, G1-bilingual and G2-spoken language. In both groups, aspects such as speech intelligibility, receptive vocabulary, psycho-linguistic skills, adaptive behaviour and behavioural problems were measured.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The children in Group 1 (bilingual) had better verbal and manual expression whereas those in Group 2 (spoken) achieved better results in terms of speech intelligibility, auditory reception and grammatical closure. These differences were confirmed statistically using Analysis of Variance. No significant differences were observed in relation to: receptive vocabulary, social and communicative skills, visual reception, auditory and visual association, visual closure and visual or auditory sequential memory.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The development of speech in these children is irrefutable; however, this study contributes a paradoxical element to the discussion: the bilingual group obtained better results in verbal fluency, hence these children should be able to evoke a greater number of words than those educated using just spoken language.
authors.affiliation: University of Córdoba, Departamento de Psicología, Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación, 14071 Córdoba, Spain. m12jirom@uco.es
authors.forename: María Salud
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Jiménez
authors.forename: María José
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Pino
authors.forename: Javier
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Herruzo
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003054:Cochlear Implants; D003638:Deafness / Q000523:psychology / Q000534:rehabilitation* / Q000601:surgery; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D007804:Language Development; D008297:Male; D012737:Sex Factors; D012813:Sign Language; D013060:Speech / Q000502:physiology*; D014706:Verbal Learning