Spoken word recognition in children with cochlear implants: a five-year study on speakers of a tonal language

To study the effects of age at implantation and duration of implant use on the performance of spoken word recognition of pediatric cochlear implantees in a tonal language setting over a period of 5 years.

Sixty-four children, given implants between the ages 1:01 and 14:09 (years:months), were divided into three age groups. They were tested on open-set word recognition ability at seven time intervals from before surgery to 5 years after surgery. Analyses of variance with repeated measurements were used to examine the effect of their age at implantation and the duration of implant use.

Duration of implant experience was significant in spoken word recognition across the three age groups (p < 0.01). Children given implants below the age of 3 years caught up with the performance of the older children at 12 months after implantation. The difference in score reached statistical significance at 2 and at 3 years after surgery (p = 0.03, p = 0.00).

The performance of Cantonese-speaking children was similar to that of English-speaking children in that better outcomes were associated with longer implant experience as well as when implantation occurred at a younger age. The children implanted before the age of 3 and who had an implant experience of more than 2 years outperformed the children who were given implants after the age of 6 and also sustained these higher scores throughout 5 years of postimplant testing.