Speech perception abilities of children with cochlear implants, tactile aids, or hearing aids

The purpose of this experiment was first, to compare the performance of three matched groups of experimental subjects who used either a single-channel cochlear implant, a multichannel cochlear implant, or a two-channel vibrotactile aid on a battery of speech perception measures, and second, to compare the performance of subjects with residual hearing who used hearing aids to that of the three groups of experimental subjects. The results revealed that the subjects using hearing aids achieved the highest scores on all measures. The performance of the group of multichannel implant users was significantly higher than that of the single-channel implant users on tests involving discrimination of speech features, categorization of stress patterns, closed-set identification of familiar words, and identification of common phrases with and without visual cues. The performance of the subjects using 3M/House and Tactaid II devices was similar on all tests except those requiring integration of auditory or tactile cues and visual cues, on which the 3M/House device users achieved significantly higher scores than did the Tactaid II device users.