SPEECH-INTELLIGIBILITY OF CHILDREN WITH COCHLEAR IMPLANTS

The speech intelligibility of 18 children with prelingual deafness was examined after using multichannel cochlear implants for an average of three years. Half of the subjects used oral communication and half us ed total communication. The nine subjects in each group were matched i n terms of age at onset of deafness, age implanted, and duration of im plant use. Sentences were elicited from the subjects on an imitative b asis and played to panels of listeners who were instructed to write do wn what they thought the subjects had said. Intelligibility was measur ed in terms of the percentage of words correctly understood in the sen tences. The average speech intelligibility score of the children who u sed oral communication was 48%, which was significantly higher than th e average score of 21% of the subjects who used total communication. T he range of scores for the subjects who used oral communication was re latively large, with the scores of the subjects with the lowest intell igibility comparable to those of the subjects who used total communica tion. None of the children who used total communication, however, demo nstrated scores similar to those of the subjects with the most intelli gible speech.