The evaluation of the efficacy of phonemic rehabilitations in Cochlear Implant users; a single subject study

Abstract

Background and Aim: In many cochlear implant users, even after some time following cochlear implantation and adequate central auditory stimulation, certain hearing processing capabilities remain unresolved. These difficulties for cochlear implant (CI) users have a very similar manifestation to the decoding sub-category of the buffalo model of auditory processing which has a direct role in accurate phoneme processing. The present study was designed to investigate phoneme processing abilities in cochlear implant users and to evaluate the efficacy of phonemic rehabilitations in this population. Methods: Six prelingually deaf children aged between 8 and 11 years were referred to Ahvaz Cochlear implant center in 2019. A single-subject study design was used to examine the performance of the CI users during three phases of baseline, intervention and follow-up. Phonemic Training and Phonemic Synthesis programs were administered and the outcomes were compared based on performance of the children in Persian Phoneme Recognition Test (P-PRT), Persian Phonemic Synthesis Test (P-PST) and Phoneme Error Analysis (PEA). The children had four weeks follow up. Two methods were used to analyze the collected data including the C-Statistic and the percentage of all non-overlapping data (PAND) through SPSP version 19.p Results: The mean age was 9.16±1.16 years. There were two males and four females. The findings provide strong evidence demonstrating that Persian CI users are suffering from phoneme processing difficulties. All findings demonstrated that P-PRT, P-PST and PEA scores improved in all six cases. Conclusions: This study suggests that phoneme-based rehabilitation strategies improve the performance of deaf children with CIs and should be used in postoperative therapy batteries.