The term rehabilitation refers to the restoration of a function that was present up to a point in time and then has been lost. In the context of cochlear implants, it refers to a person who has become deaf over time and later receives a cochlear implant and how he or she can learn to make use of the new type of hearing.

The term habilitation refers to the development of a new function that a person has never had. In the context of cochlear implants, it is relevant to children who are born deaf or who go deaf before they have had a chance to develop any oral language (called prelingual deafness). Habilitation in prelingually deaf children focuses mainly on the development of language. This ...