Pitch Discrimination, Music Abilities, and Emotional Speech Perception in School-Aged Children with Cochlear Implant

The objective of the study was to analyze complex auditory skills (music abilities and emotional speech perception) in children with cochlear implant (CI) compared to normal-hearing controls.

This was a prospective case-control study. A total of 30 controls and 28 children (7-14 years) with congenital severe-to-profound hearing loss (HL) with unilateral or bilateral CI underwent the pitch discrimination test (PDT), the songs identification test (SIT), and the melodies identification test (MIT) to measure music abilities; the speaker and gender discrimination and emotions identification auditory test (SDEIAT) to evaluate socioemotional speech perception.

Controls had significantly higher PDT, MIT, and SDEIAT scores than CI recipients (p < 0.05). Patients with asymmetrical HL and bimodal stimulation (CI and hearing aid) had significantly better MIT scores than unilateral (p = 0.007) and bilateral CIs (p = 0.013). In the bilateral CI group, patients with a history of sequential implantation had significant lower scores in melodic recognition than simultaneous CI (p = 0.005). Pitch discrimination was not related to the age of patients or to music exposure time. An inverse relationship existed between musical abilities and age of cochlear implantation (Pearson's R = -0.62), with better results before 24 months (p = 0.039). Controls and CI users recognized the gender of the speakers equally; bimodal stimulation identified complex emotions significantly better than the other groups (p < 0.05). SDEIAT was statistically related to SIT (Pearson's R = 0.59), PDT (Pearson's R = 0.67), and age of implantation (Pearson's R = -0.54) with better result the lower the age of surgery.

The close relationship between emotional speech perception, music abilities, and pitch discrimination confirmed the importance to improve complex linguistic auditory tasks that are rarely examined in clinical practice but fundamental for social interactions in children affected by congenital HL.