Speech perception with the nucleus cochlear implant in children trained with the auditory/verbal approach

Five children between the ages of 6 to 10 years using the Nucleus 22-electrode cochlear implant were tested on a battery of speech-perception tests. None of the five children used any sign language before implantation, and all received extensive training in auditory/verbal rehabilitation postimplantation. Performance ranged from 81 to 97 percent correct on the Matrix Test, from 24 to 80 percent correct on the WIPI test, from 33 to 73 percent correct on a 10-choice vowel recognition test, from 19 to 50 percent correct on a 13-choice consonant recognition test, from 2 to 46 percent words correct on a PB-K word list, from 4 to 71 percent words correct on a recorded BKB sentence test, and from 8 to 71 percent words correct on a live-voice BKB sentence test. In four of the five children, significant lipreading enhancement was observed on consonant recognition and two prelinguistically deafened children demonstrated some open-set word recognition.