Cochlear implants (CIs) for children commenced in Melbourne, Australia in 1985; infants that met audiological/medical candidacy began receiving CIs when they were younger than 12 months in 2000, and younger than 9 months in 2002. This presentation summarizes the speech perception, production, and language data that have been collected since those early days.
By the end of this session, the learner will be able to:
- Learn the evidence that supports early access to cochlear implants for long-term speech perception, speech production, language, and literacy benefits.
- List, in addition to age-at-implant, the other child, device, and family/environmental factors that are facilitators/barriers to optimum child communication outcomes.
- Apply an Implementation Science framework to consider facilitators/barriers that apply to their own early-intervention service-delivery pathways.
