Attention to speech sounds in normal-hearing and deaf children with cochlear implants.

Abstract

Cochlear implantation (CI) is a treatment for severe-to-profound hearing loss in congenitally deaf children. Although there is very little variability in auditory thresholds among CI recipients, there is a large amount of variability in language outcomes. One possible source of variability in language outcomes is individual differences in attention and cognitive processes, which may be affected by early auditory deprivation. The effect of auditory deprivation on attention to auditory input was investigated by comparing attention to speech sounds in 23 young deaf children with CIs and 23 normal-hearing age-match controls. The deaf children received their CIs between 6 and 23 months and were tested several times during the first 1.5 years after implantation. Participants were seated on their caregiver’s lap in front of a TV monitor. On each trial, they were presented with a checkerboard pattern and either silence or a repeating speech sound. Normal-hearing children looked longer at the checkerboard during the sound trials at the youngest ages whereas CI children were delayed in showing a preference for the sound trials. Moreover, performance on this task correlated with language outcome measures taken two years later, suggesting that attention to speech sounds after implantation is predictive of later language development.