Sociopragmatic skills and speech intelligibility of children with cochlear implant

Deaf and hard of hearing children represent a heterogeneous group of children, a part of this group are also children with cochlear implants. Despite the early implantation of the cochlear implant, there may be deviations in the development of speech, language and communication abilities. Poor intelligibility of child's speech can lead to various problems and can have negative impact on different areas of a child's development. Child's language development affects the level of intelligibility of speech in the child's pre-school age. The aim of the research is to describe and analyze the assessment of the speech intelligibility and sociopragmatic skills of children with cochlear implants in the pre-school period and to compare the assessment with children of typical development of the same age. We also want to determine to what extent parents, educators and speech and language therapists understand the child's speech and what is their consistency among responses. The sample will be represented with deaf children with cochlear implants and hearing children. For the purpose of this research the ICS instrument and the instrument of sociopragmatic skills, translated and adapted into Slovene language, will be used. The purpose of this article is to highlight the importance of speech intelligibility, development of sociopragmatic skills of deaf children with cochlear implants and rehabilitation.