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Cochlear Implant Rehabilitation
Speech and language acquisition and development require certain pre-requisites including intact sensory channels particularly auditory ones, intact central processing areas in the brain, adequate cognitive skills and sufficient environmental stimulation. For persons having hearing impairment, hearing difficulties represent the main obstacle to language development. With the current development in hearing aids and cochlear implant technology, overcoming the hearing difficulty obstacle became possible. However, for these technological processes to be effective, it is essential that the child receives appropriate auditory and language stimulation therapy in an intensive consistent manner in order to help the child overcome the hearing deprivation duration that he/she has passed through before being implanted / aided.
It is also worth noting that the auditory signals that the person receives differ in its nature in cochlear implanted patients versus persons fitted with hearing aids. Additionally, there is a great misbelief that cochlear implanted persons acquire listening skills as soon as they get implanted. This is not true; despite the ability of the cochlear implant in promoting sound detection abilities, still discrimination and other higher auditory skills need a lot of training before the cochlear implanted person is able to associate meaning to the auditory stimuli they get exposed to daily, thereby, enhancing their listening - and accordingly - their verbal communication skills.