Virginie Keukeleire verdedigde op 27 juni 2026 haar doctoraat
aan de VUB over 'de cognitiev e ontwikkeling van CI-jongeren'.
Op 27 juni 2026 had aan de Vrije Universiteit van Brussel de verdediging plaats van het doctoraat van Virginie Keukeleire over "Développement cognitif des adolescent·es sourd·es avec implants cochléaires' (de cognitieve ontwikkeling van dove jongeren met een CI). Leo De Raeve (ONICI) was er één van de juryleden, die zagen dat Virginie met glans haar doctoraat verdedigde. Het doctoraat omvat 3 grote studies gericht op 3 verschillende domeinen: begrijpend lezen, werkgeheugen en verbale vloeiendheid en dit bij CI-jongeren tussen 10 en 15 jaar.
In het Engelstalige abstract vind je hierover meer informatie:
"Early hearing detection and intervention programs, in conjunction with advancements in hearing technologies, currently play a pivotal role in the development of children and adolescents with hearing loss. These societal changes are leading to a gradual transformation in the profile of this population. Cochlear implantation has emerged as the standard therapeutic option for individuals with severe to profound deafness. Despite its inability to fully restore hearing, cochlear implant (CI) has been demonstrated to facilitate linguistic development. In the absence of associated disorders, the majority of children fitted with CI appear to achieve comparable oral and written skills to those of their typically hearing (TH) peers. However, these abilities can obscure underlying challenges, and substantial variability has been regularly described.
Adolescence is a critical period during which communicative, social, and academic demands increase, while non-audiological care tends to decrease. The present research aims to provide an updated overview of the profiles of adolescents with congenital deafness and who have been fitted with CI. The thesis manuscript delineates three domains of competence that are instrumental in attaining academic success.
Study I investigated the written comprehension of sentences and short texts. Comparable levels of accuracy in sentence comprehension were observed between the CI and TH adolescents. However, CI adolescents exhibited slower rates of processing and encountered challenges with personal pronouns. At the text level, CI adolescents demonstrated lower levels of proficiency than their TH peers. Specifically, they experienced difficulties in the identification of the main idea, the recollection of details, and the processing of predictive information.
Study II assessed working memory skills. The working memory capacity of CI adolescents was equivalent to that of their TH peers. CI adolescents also demonstrated comparable working memory functioning, including phonological similarity and articulatory suppression effects. However, further research is necessary to elucidate the influence of motor actions on the process of memorization. Additionally, the serial order processing of CI adolescents appears to be analogous to that of TH adolescents.
Study III examined verbal semantic fluency skills. CI adolescents demonstrateda higher level of word production and larger clusters than their TH peers. The two groups exhibited comparable temporal dynamics of performance and strategic processes during the response time. The total number of correct words and the number of switches decreased over response time, while the ratio of switch types remained constant.
In summary, the presented studies indicated that CI adolescents exhibited performance levels that were either comparable to or even superior to those of their peers with regard to written sentence comprehension, working memory and semantic verbal fluency. However, they demonstrated a weaker capacity for written text comprehension. These findings indicate a more favorable developmental trajectory than previously suggested."
