Phoneme Categorization in Prelingually Deaf Adult Cochlear Implant Users

Phoneme categorization (PC) for voice onset time and second formant transition was studied in adult cochlear implant (CI) users with early-onset deafness and hearing controls.

Identification and discrimination tasks were administered to 30 participants implanted before 4 years of age, 21 participants implanted after 7 years of age, and 21 hearing individuals.

Distinctive identification and discrimination functions confirmed PC within all groups. Compared to hearing participants, the CI groups generally displayed longer/higher category boundaries, shallower identification function slopes, reduced identification consistency, and reduced discrimination performance. A principal component analysis revealed that identification consistency, discrimination accuracy, and identification function slope, but not boundary location, loaded on a single factor, reflecting general PC performance. Earlier implantation was associated with better PC performance within the early CI group, but not the late CI group. Within the early CI group, earlier implantation age but not PC performance was associated with better speech recognition. Conversely, within the late CI group, better PC performance but not earlier implantation age was associated with better speech recognition.

Results suggest that implantation timing within the sensitive period before 4 years of age partly determines the level of PC performance. They also suggest that early implantation may promote development of higher level processes that can compensate for relatively poor PC performance, as can occur in challenging listening conditions.