A comparison of cochlear implant processing strategies in children using speech pattern audiometry

The aim of this study was to use Speech Pattern Audiometry (SPA) to compare phoneme perception performance between SPEAK and ACE processing strategies with children using the Nucleus 24 cochlear implant. Listeners were evaluated in terms of ability to identify two synthetic word pairs, one signalling a voicing contrast and the other signalling a place of articulation contrast. For both word pairs, ACE was associated with more 'normal' phoneme boundaries than SPEAK. There was also a non-significant trend for better identification ability with ACE compared to SPEAK. The study suggests that there may be a place for SPA as part of the clinical battery of tests used for evaluation of cochlear implant speech processing strategies in children. Copyright (c) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.