Associations between auditory capacity, speech and language, level of communication and parental assessment of children with cochlear implant

168 children with cochlear implants were assessed as regards to auditory capacity, level of speech and language and communicative skills. The assessments were made by speech and language pathologists and parents. The purpose of the study was to analyse the associations between the four areas and furthermore to analyse associations between professional and parental assessments. The children were assessed with the Tait Video Analysis, the receptive part of the Reynell Test, a phonological test and a vocabulary test. The four objective tests were analysed for potential associations between results. In addition, potential associations between the results of the four tests and parental assessment of their child's auditory capacity (CAP) and speech intelligibility (SIR) were investigated. The Gamma Test and the Fisher's Exact Test were used on the ordinal and categorized data sets, respectively. The results of all the four auditory and structural speech and language tests were positively associated with each other (Gamma coefficients >0.8 and p values <0.001), which strengthens the validity of the individual tests and substantiates the observed results. Parental assessments were positively associated with the results of the four objective tests, which shows that parents are valid reporters of the level of their child's auditory, as well as speech and language development.