IMPROVEMENTS IN SPEECH-PERCEPTION BY CHILDREN WITH PROFOUND PRELINGUAL HEARING-LOSS - EFFECTS OF DEVICE, COMMUNICATION MODE, AND CHRONOLOGICAL AGE

The present investigation expanded on an earlier study by Miyamoto, Os berger, Todd, Robbins, Karasek, et al. (1994) who compared the speech perception skills of two groups of children with profound prelingual h earing loss. The first group had received the Nucleus multichannel coc hlear implant and was tested longitudinally. The second group, who wer e not implanted and used conventional hearing aids, was tested at a si ngle point in time. In the present study, speech perception scores wer e examined over time for both groups of children as a function of comm unication mode of the child. Separate linear regressions of speech per ception scores as a function of age were computed to estimate the rate of improvement in speech perception abilities that might be expected due to maturation For the hearing aid users (n = 58) within each commu nication mode. The resulting regression lines were used to compare the estimated rate of speech perception growth for each hearing aid group to the observed gains in speech perception made by the children with multichannel cochlear implants. A large number of children using cochl ear implants (n = 74) were tested over a long period of implant use (m = 3.5 years) that ranged From zero to 8.5 years. In general, speech p erception scores For the children using cochlear implants were higher than those predicted for a group of children with 101-110 dB HI of hea ring loss using hearing aids, and they approached the scores predicted for a group of children with 90-100 dB HI of hearing loss using heari ng aids.