The rehabilitation of the children with a cochlear implant as a way to the promotion of the natural development of the auditory perception, communication, and speech

The objective of the present study was to substantiate and present the new approach to the rehabilitation of the children with cochlear implants (CI), the so-called ZP-rehabilitation, with special reference to its principal systemic differences from the 'hearing-speech' rehabilitation. The new method was tested in the course of rehabilitation of 90 deaf and dumb children having cochlear implants since the early and preschool age with the participation of 152 members of their families. As a result of the rehabilitative treatment, all the children included in the study were put on the way of the natural (normal) development of the auditory perception, communication, and speech while all the adults could communicate with the children on the natural sensory basis. It is concluded that the ZP-rehabilitation enables the child with a cochlear implant to embark on the path of the natural (normal) development and to pass (on the new natural sensory basis) through those early stages of ontogenesis that the deaf and dumb child and his relatives had gone through during the preceding period; moreover it helps to rearrange the relations between the child and his family on this new sensory basis.