Speech perception results in children with cochlear implants: Contributingfactors

Speech perception test results were obtained from a group of 40 pediatric c ochlear implant users, Half of the children participated in oral-only habil itation programs, which included both traditional oral and auditory-verbal approaches, and half participated in programs that used a combination of or al and manual communication referred to as total communication (TC). Analys is of the scores showed that children enrolled in oral-only habilitation pr ograms scored significantly higher on the speech perception measures than d id children who were enrolled in total communication-based programs. These results were inconsistent with those of other reports, which suggested that communication methods had little effect on implant outcomes. To further ex amine the reasons for the differences in performance, we analyzed 7 additio nal factors, including length of implant use, age at surgery, device type, socioeconomic status, bilingualism school setting, and participation in pri vate therapy, which may affect implant performance, Multiple-regression ana lysis again showed communication mode to be the factor most highly correlat ed with speech perception abilities among this group of children.