What is Critical Period?
This states that the first few years of a child’s life include the time during which language develops in the best conditions and after this period of time, language learning is much more difficult and less successful in the long run. The critical period is thought to be up until the age of 1.The first year of life has the greatest promise of molding the brain to learn language, therefore it is the most successful time to have intervention services. Services completed early as possible in the first year of life leads to postive effects and outcomes.
If your child has hearing loss, they likely are not receiving all the speech coming from you as the parents, family members, friends, teachers. Your child is and will continue to miss out on building a baseline for proper language development that is crucial later on for exceeding in school, social aspects, and so on, if amplification devices are not fit on the child.
Cardon G, Campbell J, Sharma A. Plasticity in the developing auditory cortex: evidence from children with sensorineural hearing loss and auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder. J Am Acad Audiol. 2012 Jun;23(6):396-411; quiz 495. doi: 10.3766/jaaa.23.6.3. PMID: 22668761; PMCID: PMC3733172.
Friedmann N, Rusou D. Critical period for first language: the crucial role of language input during the first year of life. Curr Opin Neurobiol. 2015 Dec;35:27-34. doi: 10.1016/j.conb.2015.06.003. Epub 2015 Jun 23. PMID: 26111432.
