The relationship between electrical auditory middle-latency response components and measures of auditory performance and speech intelligibility in pediatric cochlear implant recipients

Abstract

Evidence for the utility of electrically-evoked auditory responses, as measures of objective hearing assessments in pediatric cochlear implant (CI) recipients, is proliferating. Recently, we demonstrated the relationship between electrical auditory brainstem response (EABR) and measures of auditory performance and speech intelligibility in pediatric CI users (Wang, Pan, Deshpande, & Ma, 2015). However, the EABR reflects activity only up to the auditory brainstem. The electrical auditory middle-latency response (EAMLR) is sensitive to the functioning of the sub-cortical structures as well as the auditory cortex and thus has greater utility in predicting auditory perception and processing. Here, we present data from 40 pre-lingually hearing impaired, pediatric CI recipients. The relationship between components of the EAMLR (latencies of Na, Pa, Nb, Pb; Na-Pa amplitude; and Na-Pa interval) and measures of auditory performance and speech intelligibility assessed using care-giver rating scales such as Categories of Auditory Performance (CAP) (Archbold, Lutman, & Marshall, 1995) and Speech Intelligibility Rating (SIR) (Allen, Nikolopoulos, Dyar, & O'Donoghue, 2001), respectively, are analyzed. EAMLR profiles of “good” versus “poor” CI users (based on CAP and SIR ratings) will be discussed. Additionally, the effect of age of implantation on the EAMLR, CAP and SIR outcomes will be considered.