SLPQualitativeJournal of deaf studies and deaf education2025

Communicative participation of school-aged children with cochlear implants: parental perceptions.

Louise Duchesne, Marie-Pier Gingras, Maude Gagnon

PMID 40304708

WHAT IT FOUND

Parents of children with cochlear implants described a gap between global satisfaction and daily reality.

While children managed to communicate, parents reported specific struggles with vocabulary, syntax, and figurative language. Background noise and group settings severely limited participation, requiring constant adaptation from both child and parent.

Key findings

01Parents reported that while children could generally be understood, they faced specific difficulties with vocabulary, sentence construction, figurative language, and conversational rules.

02Background noise and lack of access to lipreading were identified as major barriers to participation in home, school, and community settings.

03Maintaining communication required active strategies from parents and significant effort from children, rather than relying on the implant alone.

STILL TO COME

How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs

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What it does not show

The sample was demographically homogeneous, consisting primarily of high socioeconomic status, Caucasian, French-speaking families. Findings reflect parental perceptions and may not align with objective clinical measures of language ability. The study could not determine if specific factors like age at implantation influenced the reported communication difficulties. Interviews were not member-checked, meaning participants did not review or validate the transcripts or findings.

The easy way to misread this

Do not interpret the parents' global satisfaction as evidence that communication barriers are minimal. The study highlights that despite positive overall impressions, specific language deficits and environmental barriers significantly restrict participation in daily life.

Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →