Speech therapy with cochlear implant wearers.

Abstract

The speech production of three post-lingually deafened adults, who derived no benefit from wearing hearing aids, was assessed. Individual therapy programmes were devised based on these assessments and the subjects participated in a course of speech therapy. They then received cochlear implants and had a further course of speech therapy using their implants. Changes in speech production were judged by trained listeners, who heard tape-recorded samples of the subjects' speech. These samples were taken at various intervals before and after therapy alone, and with the cochlear implant. Significant improvement was heard in the speech production of two of the subjects following speech therapy alone. All three subjects were judged to have improved production of speech after using their cochlear implants for 6 months.