COCHLEAR IMPLANT USE BY PRELINGUALLY DEAFENED CHILDREN - THE INFLUENCES OF AGE AT IMPLANT AND LENGTH OF DEVICE USE

This study focused on the long-term speech perception performances of 34 prelingually deafened children who received multichannel cochlear i mplants manufactured by Cochlear Corporation. The children were groupe d by the age at which they received cochlear implants and were charact erized by the amount of time they used their devices per day. A variet y of speech perception tests were administered to the children at annu al intervals Following the connection of the external implant hardware . No significant differences in performance are evident for children i mplanted before age 5 compared to children implanted after age 5 on cl osed-set tests of speech perception ability All children demonstrated an improvement in performance compared to the pre-operative condition. Open-set word recognition performance is significantly better for chi ldren implanted before age 5 compared to children implanted after age 5 at the 36-month test interval and the 48-month test interval. User s tatus, defined by the amount of daily use of the implant, significantl y affects all measures of speech perception performance except pattern perception.