Influence of signal processing strategy in auditory abilities

The signal processing strategy is a parameter that may influence the auditory performance of cochlear implant and is important to optimize this parameter to provide better speech perception, especially in difficult listening situations.

To evaluate the individual's auditory performance using two different signal processing strategy.

Prospective study with 11 prelingually deafened children with open-set speech recognition. A within-subjects design was used to compare performance with standard HiRes and HiRes 120 in three different moments. During test sessions, subject's performance was evaluated by warble-tone sound-field thresholds, speech perception evaluation, in quiet and in noise.

In the silence, children S1, S4, S5, S7 showed better performance with the HiRes 120 strategy and children S2, S9, S11 showed better performance with the HiRes strategy. In the noise was also observed that some children performed better using the HiRes 120 strategy and other with HiRes.

Not all children presented the same pattern of response to the different strategies used in this study, which reinforces the need to look at optimizing cochlear implant clinical programming.