High-Variability Sentence Recognition in Long-Term Cochlear Implant Users: Associations With Rapid Phonological Coding and Executive Functioning

Conclusions: These findings provide converging support for neurocognitive models that propose two channels for speech-language processing: a fast-automatic channel that predominates whenever possible and a compensatory slow-effortful processing channel that is activated during perceptually-challenging speech processing tasks that are not fully managed by the fast-automatic channel (ease of language understanding, framework for understanding effortful listening, and auditory neurocognitive model). CI users showed significantly poorer performance on measures of high-variability sentence recognition than NH peers, even after simple sentence recognition was controlled. Nonword repetition scores showed almost no overlap between CI and NH samples, and correlations between nonword repetition scores and high-variability sentence recognition were consistent with greater reliance on engagement of fast-automatic phonological coding for high-variability sentence recognition in the CI sample than in the NH sample. Further investigation of the verbal WM–sentence recognition relationship in CI users is recommended. Assessment of fast-automatic phonological processing and slow-effortful EF skills may provide a better understanding of speech perception outcomes in CI users in the clinical setting.
Source: Ear and Hearing - Category: Audiology Tags: Research Articles Source Type: research