ISBN-13: 9783639165395 / Angielski / Miękka / 2009 / 216 str.
An in-depth, longitudinal study of the speech andoral language development of eight infants with aprofound hearing loss is presented in this book. Eachinfant received early auditory intervention focusedon developing their speech and oral language. Infantswere tracked for two years, during the period whenthey changed from a hearing aid to a cochlear implant. Despite a wide range of individual differences acrossthe group of infants, the results suggest somegeneral trends. The findings support and extendprevious studies which have demonstrated the benefitsof early intervention for communication developmentin infants with hearing loss. Factors affecting rates of development weremultifaceted and the findings capture the complexityof early oral language development, which has beenlacking in previous studies of infants withsignificant hearing loss, receiving a cochlearimplant. Results suggest that continued intensivelong-term intervention is required if the infants areto attain typical oral speech and languagedevelopment. Results also provide support forimplantation before 12 months of age.