TELEPHONE SPEECH COMPREHENSION IN CHILDREN WITH MULTICHANNEL COCHLEARIMPLANTS

Telephone speech comprehension is being evaluated in six prelingually deaf children implanted with the Nucleus 22 prosthesis fitted with the Speak strategy. All of them have had at least 1.5 years of experience with their implant. When the tests began, they had already had at lea st 2 months' experience with the same map in their speech processor. T he children were trained in the use of the telephone as part of the re habilitation program. None of them used it regularly but as a game tha t they found very entertaining. A special battery, the Bate-fon (bater ia para telefono = telephone battery), was designed for training and e valuation purposes. It includes the five Spanish vowels in isolation, diphthongs, onomatopoetic animal voices, two-syllable, and three-sylla ble words. The tests were administered 1.5-2 years after the switch-on of their speech processor. Standard acoustic telephone coupling was u sed. The speech material was presented to the child on colored cards. Stimuli were presented twice. Children were informed when the response was incorrect. Averaged results indicated that the percentages of cor rect responses for all the speech material increase in the second pres entation. All children have shown some degree of telephone communicati on abilities. As a result of the training, some of the children are us ing the telephone to communicate with their families.