Early vocal development in a normally hearing infant and a young cochlear implant recipient

The developmental progress before expressing the first words is rarely assessed for Germanspeaking children. For this reason two single-case studies were performed to investigate the early vocal development of a normal hearing female infant and a young female cochlear implant (CI) recipient. Longitudinal data were collected by performing monthly audio- And video-recordings of one-hour mother-child-interactions over one year. Implementation of the Stark Assessment of Early Vocal Development - Revised (SAEVD-R) allowed the classification of children's utterances and the assessment of developmental progress in both children. Results show a decrease of early vocalizations and an increase of adult-like vocalizations for the normal hearing infant as well as for the implanted toddler over the first year. In the first six months of life and respectively of hearing experience the children almost exclusively produced vocalizations assigned to the early developmental levels 1-3 of SAEVD-R. An increase of vocalizations assigned to the more mature levels 4 and 5 of SAEVD-R containing true vowels and consonants was observed in the second half of the first year. Overall the CI recipient showed a slightly faster progress of development than the normal hearing infant with respect to hearing age. Interrater- And intrarater-reliability using the SAEVD-R were satisfying.