The effect of language structure on linguistic strengths and weaknesses in children with cochlear implants: Evidence from Italian

Previous studies have found that the early fitting of cochlear implants in children has beneficial effects on their expressive and receptive language. However, different ages are identified in different studies, and some studies present contradictory results. Starting from these observations, our study suggests that at least two additional factors play an important role in determining linguistic outcomes. The first is the area of language under investigation: lexicon, phonology, morphosyntax, semantics, and pragmatics. The second factor is the typological features of the child's target language. Our study, which involved 33 Italian-speaking children who received a cochlear implant and 33 age and gender matched controls, reveals that lexical, semantic, pragmatic, and phonological knowledge are not particularly vulnerable in these children. By contrast, one area of morphosyntax (production of clitic pronouns) is especially challenging. In addition, an effect of age of implantation was found only in this morphosyntactic area. This is the first study on language development in Italian-speaking children with cochlear implants.