Evaluation of auditory development in infants and toddlers who received cochlear implants under the age of 24 months with the LittlEARS) Auditory Questionnaire.

Background And Aims: Newborn hearing screening and early intervention for congenital hearing loss have created a need for tools assessing the hearing development of very young children. A multidisciplinary evaluation of children's development is now becoming standard in clinical practice, though not many reliable diagnostic instruments exist. For this reason, the LittlEARS Auditory Questionnaire (LEAQ) was created to assess the auditory skills of a growing population of infants and toddlers who receive hearing instruments. The LEAQ relies on parent report, which has been shown to be a reliable way of assessing child development. Results with this tool in a group of children who received very early cochlear implantation are presented.

Methods: The LEAQ is the first module of the LittlEARS comprehensive test battery for children under the age of two who have normal hearing (NH), cochlear implants (CIs) or hearing aids (HAs). The LEAQ is a parent questionnaire comprised of 35 "yes/no" questions which can be completed by parents in less than 10 min. Sixty-three children who received unilateral CIs at a young age were assessed longitudinally and their performance was compared to that of a NH group.

Results: All CI children reached the maximum possible score on the LEAQ on average by 22 months of hearing age, i.e. 38 months of chronological age. In comparison, the NH group reached the maximum score by 24 months of age demonstrating that auditory skills of CI children often develop quicker than those of NH children. In the two comparison groups of children aged (a) younger and older than 12 months, and (b) between 6-9 and 21-24 months at first fitting, the early implanted children reached the highest scores faster than the later implanted children. Furthermore, three children with additional needs were tested. They showed slower growth over time but also received benefits from early implantation.

Conclusions: The LEAQ is a quick and effective tool for assessing auditory skills of very young children with or without hearing loss. In our study, the auditory skills of children with CI progressed very quickly after implantation and were comparable with those of NH peers.