Verbal Fluency in Prelingually Deaf, Early Implanted Children and Adolescents With Cochlear Implants.

Cochlear implant users show poorer phonological and semantic verbal fluency than normal-hearing peers, and their verbal fluency is significantly associated with speech perception and verbal working memory. These findings suggest deficits in fluent retrieval of phonological and semantic information from long-term lexical memory in cochlear implant users.