Speech Perception Skills of Hindi Speaking Children with Pre-lingual Hearing Loss Using Hearing Aids and Cochlear Implants

AbstractVery few published studies have reported auditory speech perception in Hindi children with pre-lingual hearing loss. The study is aimed at comparing the speech perception skills of Hindi speaking children with pre-lingual severe to profound hearing loss using hearing aids and cochlear implants. Forty-three 6 to 8-year old children were included as participants, of which 22 were bilateral behind-the-ear hearing aid (HA) users and 21 were unilateral cochlear implant (CI) users. Speech perception was assessed through a forced-choice, picture-pointing task using recorded stimuli presented at 70  dB HL in the sound field. The skills assessed include: (a) pattern perception, (b) bisyllabic word identification, (c) monosyllabic word identification, (d) sentence identification and (e) minimal pair identification. Children using CI consistently performed significantly better than those with H A on all tasks. For the skills assessed, best performance was seen in pattern perception and poorest performance was seen in monosyllabic word identification. One participant from the CI group obtained ceiling scores for pattern perception and bisyllabic word identification. There was no statistical ly significant difference in the performance of 6 to 7 and 7 to 8-year-old children for any of the tasks. Children fitted with CI have better access to the cues important for perception of speech and hence perform consistently better than those using hearing aids. Recorded speech perception ...
Source: Indian Journal of Otolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery - Category: ENT & OMF Source Type: research