Speech Intelligibility in Persian Hearing Impaired Children with Cochlear Implants and Hearing Aids

The aim of present study is to evaluate and compare speech intelligibility in hearing impaired children with cochlear implants (CI) and hearing aid (HA) users and children with normal hearing (NH). The sample consisted of 45 Persian-speaking children aged 3 to 5-years-old. They were divided into three groups, and each group had 15, children, children with CI and children using hearing aids in Hamadan. Participants was evaluated by the test of speech intelligibility level. Results of ANOVA on speech intelligibility test showed that NH children had significantly better reading performance than hearing impaired children with CI and HA. Post-hoc analysis, using Scheffe test, indicated that the mean score of speech intelligibility of normal children was higher than the HA and CI groups; but the difference was not significant between mean of speech intelligibility in children with hearing loss that use cochlear implant and those using HA. It is clear that even with remarkabkle advances in HA technology, many hearing impaired children continue to find speech production a challenging problem. Given that speech intelligibility is a key element in proper communication and social interaction, consequently, educational and rehabilitation programs are essential to improve speech intelligibility of children with hearing loss.