Factors Contributing to Speech Perception Scores in Long-Term Pediatric Cochlear Implant Users
By Davidson, Lisa S.; Geers, Ann E.; Blamey, Peter J.; Tobey, Emily; Brenner, Christine; Ear and Hearing, Volume 32, Number 1, pages 19S-26SPublication Date: February 2011
Study assessed the speech perception abilities of long term pediatric cochlear implant (CI) recipients by comparing scores obtained at elementary school with those obtained at high school. Study participants were 112 high school students aged 15 to 18 years who had received a CI when they were 2 to 5 years old and were at first evaluated at 8 to 9 years of age while in elementary school. The test battery included (1) hard and easy word lists on the Lexical Neighborhood Test (LNT), (2) the Bamford Kowal Bench sentence test, (3) the Children’s Auditory-Visual Enhancement Test, (4) the Test of Auditory Comprehension of Language at elementary school level, (5) the Peabody Picture Vocabulary test at high school level, and (6) the McGarr sentences measuring correct consonants. Speech perception at high school level was measured in both optimal and demanding listening conditions including background noise and low intensity level. Speech perception scores were compared based on age at test, lexical difficulty of stimuli, listening environment, visual or audiovisual imput mode, and language age. All group mean scores significantly increased with age across the two test sessions. Scores of adolescents significantly decreased in demanding listening conditions. The effect of lexical difficulty on the LNT scores increased with age and decreased for adolescents in challenging listening conditions. Calculated curves for percent correct speech perception scores and consonants correct on the McGarr sentences, plotted against age-equivalent language scores on the Test of Auditory Comprehension of Language and Peabody Vocabulary Test, achieved asymptote at similar ages, around 10 to 11 years.
Published by: Lippincott, Williams, & Wilkins (Website:http://www.lww.com)
Link to text: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3187573/?tool=pubmed
