Language and hearing impairment: how early application of cochlear implant improves the acquisition of various linguistic components.

Abstract

Why is the world of deafness also called the invisible city? The researcher Simonetta Maragna defines deafness as a hidden disability because its issues are not easily and immediately identifiable by hearing people and outsiders to this world. That is right, an actual world. The world of the deaf has its own history and its own culture that goes back to a now faraway era. The universe of the deaf revolves around Sign Language, which is the most direct, natural and visual means of communication that deaf people use to express themselves. Communication is essential to the life of man, in fact it is communication that allows human beings to perform certain functions within society. Spoken language plays the most important role in interpersonal communication and its lack of acquisition and the inability to perceive it constitute a tremendous barrier between people. Language development occurs through a process that goes from the reception of spoken language, to speech, to its acquisition and decoding, to then materialize in reproduction. Only if all the psycho-physical functions are normal, does the individual acquire the development of his or her linguistic heritage. If we remove from this chain the first function, that of hearing, we can well understand the difficulty to complete the course. A child who has a severe or very severe hearing loss, congenital or acquired prior to the development of language, will not be able to properly develop language spontaneously. Today, however, technology has provided deaf people with a possible solution: the cochlear implant. Traditional hearing aids, in fact, cannot always guarantee satisfactory auditory and communicative performance. Hence intervenes the bionic ear, an electronic prosthesis that is surgically implanted in the inner ear, and electrically stimulates the auditory nerve fibers. Cochlear implant surgery represents an important solution for the rehabilitation of adult patients with severe to profound hearing loss and for the rehabilitation of the profoundly deaf child. However, early identification of the child to direct towards cochlear implantation is important to enable early restoration of auditory sensitivity and, consequently, of the perception of linguistic elements. Numerous studies, in fact, confirm that early cochlear implantation improves the results of patients’ linguistic abilities.