THE EFFECTS OF PROCESSOR STRATEGY ON THE SPEECH-PERCEPTION PERFORMANCE OF PEDIATRIC NUCLEUS MULTICHANNEL COCHLEAR IMPLANT USERS

Objective: The present investigation examined the speech perception sk ills of pediatric cochlear implant users who changed from their origin al speech processors and strategies to the Spectral Peak (SPEAK) strat egy. Design: A within-subjects design was used to compare individual s ubject's performance using the SPEAK strategy with that obtained with their previous speech strategy (FOF1F2 or Multipeak) in this retrospec tive study. The subjects demonstrated a wide range of perceptual abili ties and had used a cochlear implant for varying lengths of time befor e converting to the SPEAK. strategy. Results: Nine of the 11 subjects showed significant improvement on at least one of the open-set word re cognition measures, whereas two subjects showed no change on any of th e open-set measures when using the SPEAK strategy. Conclusions: The pr esent results suggest that the majority of pediatric cochlear implant users are likely to show improved speech perception performance when c onverting to the new SPEAK processing strategy.