SPEECH-PERCEPTION PERFORMANCE IN PRELINGUALLY DEAFENED FRENCH CHILDREN USING THE NUCLEUS MULTICHANNEL COCHLEAR IMPLANT

Purpose: The speech-perception abilities of 36 French children, whose onset of deafness occurred before 2 years of age, was longitudinally e xamined after they received a Nucleus multichannel cochlear implant. M ethods: Speech perception was assessed in four areas: phoneme detectio n, closed-set word and sentence recognition; and modified open-set rec ognition. Results: All children achieved phoneme detection by 3 months after implantation. Closed-set word and sentence recognition appeared initially less accurate in children with congenital deafness than in the prelingually deafened children; however, these differences disappe ared by 18 months after implantation. Some modified open-set recogniti on was evident by 12 months after implantation and continued to improv e 3 years after implantation. Conclusions: Data demonstrate significan t improvements in speech perception with implant experience: 15 (60%) of 25 of the children identified sentences in closed sets, 22 (88%) of 25 identified words in closed sets after 12 months' experience, and 1 3 (81%) of 16 demonstrated open-set recognition after 24 months of imp lant use.