A comparison of language achievement in children with cochlear implants and children using hearing aids

English language achievement of 29 prelingually deaf children with 3 or mor e years of cochlear implant (CI) experience was compared to the achievement levels of prelingually deaf children who did not have such CI experience. Language achievement was measured by the Rhode island Test of Language Stru cture (RITLS), a measure of signed and spoken sentence comprehension, and t he Index of Productive Syntax (IPSyn), a measure of expressive (signed and spoken) English grammar. When the CI users were compared with their deaf ag e mates who contributed to the norms of the RITLS, it was found that CI use rs achieved significantly better stores. Likewise, we found that CI users p erformed better than 29 deaf children who used hearing aids (HAs) with resp ect to English grammar achievement as indexed by the IPSyn. Additionally, w e found that chronological age highly correlated with IPSyn levels only amo ng the non-CI users, whereas length of CI experience was significantly corr elated with IPSyn scores for CI users. Finally, clear differences between t hose with and without CI experience were found by 2 years of post-implant e xperience. These data provide evidence that children who receive Cls benefi t in the form of improved English language comprehension and production.