Reading and spelling abilities of deaf adolescents with cochlear implants and hearing AIDS.

A total of 86 deaf children aged between 12 and 16 years were recruited from schools for the deaf, specialist units attached to a school, and mainstream schools. Approximately one-third used hearing aids, one-third had received a cochlear implant before 42 months, and one-third had been implanted later. The 3 subgroups were matched for age and nonverbal IQ, and all had an unaided hearing loss of at least 85 dB. Assessments revealed mean reading ages that were several years below chronological age for all 3 groups. However, participants in the hearing aid group performed best. Reading levels were not predicted by age of diagnosis or degree of hearing loss, but there was a relationship between reading level and presence of phonetic errors in spelling. There were also differences in educational setting, with the great majority of children in the hearing aid group in a school for the deaf and relatively more of the children with cochlear implants being educated in a unit or mainstream setting.