Abstract
This investigation determined whether the audiological performance of cochlear implant users varied with experience. Thirteen Nucleus and 14 lneraid subjects were evaluated at 1, 9, and 18 mo after cochlear implant connection. Ten Nucleus and five lneraid subjects were tested at 30 mo. On average, the ability of the subjects to recognizewords and phonemes in an audition-only condition improved during the first 9 mo, as did their ability to recognize spondees in noise. The phoneme scores continuedto improve during the next 9 mo. Environmental sound recognition improved gradually; significant improvement from the 1 mo scores was not noted until 18 mo. About half of the subjects who demonstrated poorword recognition at 1 mo showed significantly improved percent word correct scores by 18 mo. The Nucleus and lneraid subjects did not differ in their patterns of change over time. An information transmission analysis performedon the subjects’ consonant confusion matrices showed relatively little change for the nasality and place features during the first 18 mo, and relatively large change for the voice, duration, and frication features. Most improvement in the feature scores occurred during the first 9 mo.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 200-209 |
Number of pages | 10 |
Journal | Ear and hearing |
Volume | 13 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jun 1992 |