Working Memory Capacity, Verbal Rehearsal Speed, and Scanning in Deaf Children with Cochlear Implants

Cochlear implants have been an effective intervention for many profoundly deaf adults and children. Specifically, in prelingually deaf children, cochlear implants provide the first exposure to both environmental sounds and spoken language. After gaining access to sound and spoken language, many children using cochlear implants have been found to develop language with a developmental trajectory that is similar to normally-hearing children. However, several other cognitive skills of deaf children using cochlear implants appear to be atypical and do not develop fully even after several years of cochlear implant use. In this chapter, we review recent findings on cognitive processes in profoundly deaf children who use cochlear implants. Specifically, we discuss the shorter immediate memory spans of deaf children using cochlear implants and explain why measures of their speaking rate and speech timing provide important new clues to their verbal rehearsal and scanning processes. In addition, we also consider recent findings on the nonword repetition skills of deaf children who use cochlear implants. These results suggest that some deaf children with cochlear implants may have difficulties in rapidly encoding, rehearsing, and repeating novel phonological patterns. Our recent findings suggest that fundamental cognitive processes play an important role in the development of speech and language following cochlear implantation.