The Comparison of Speech Intelligibility between the Cochlear Implanted and Normal-Hearing Children

Area of Science:

• Pediatric audiology and speech-language pathology.
• Comparative analysis of auditory and speech perception in children with hearing impairments.

Background:

• Advancements in hearing technologies necessitate updated assessments of speech intelligibility in hearing-impaired children.
• Understanding the impact of hearing aids (HA) and cochlear implants (CI) on auditory and speech development is crucial.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare speech intelligibility and auditory perception abilities between normal-hearing (NH) children and those using HA or CI.
• To evaluate the effectiveness of different hearing technologies in children aged 5-7 years.

Main Methods:

• An analytic cross-sectional study involving 60 Persian-speaking children aged 5-7 years.
• Participants were divided into three groups: normal-hearing (NH), hearing aid (HA) users, and cochlear implant (CI) users (n=20 each).
• Speech Intelligibility Rating (SIR) and Categories of Auditory Performance (CAP) tests were administered; data analyzed using one-way ANOVA.

Main Results:

• NH children exhibited significantly higher SIR scores than both HA and CI groups (p<0.01).
• No significant difference in SIR scores was observed between HA and CI groups (p=0.885).
• NH children demonstrated significantly higher CAP scores compared to HA and CI groups (p=0.038).

Conclusions:

• Normal-hearing children possess superior speech intelligibility and auditory performance compared to children with hearing loss using HA or CI.
• No significant functional difference in speech intelligibility or auditory perception was found between HA and CI users.
• Early acoustical amplification is critically important for optimizing auditory and speech functions in children with hearing loss.