The Age at Which Young Deaf Children Receive Cochlear Implants and Their Vocabulary and Speech-Production Growth: Is There an Added Value for Early Implantation?

There seems to be a substantial benefit for both speech and vocabulary outcomes when children receive their implant before the age of 2.5 yr. This benefit may combine a burst of growth after implantation with the impact of increased length of use at any given age. The added advantage (i.e., burst of growth) diminishes systematically with increasing age at implantation.