ASA 124th Meeting New Orleans 1992 October

2pSP4. Speech production skills of children with cochlear implants with congenital or acquired deafness.

Mary Joe Osberger

Indiana Univ. School of Med., Depart. of Otolaryngol., Riley Res. Wing, Rm. 044, Indianapolis, IN 46202

M. Jane Collins

Louisiana State Univ., Baton Rouge, LA 70803

Earlier results [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 88, S192 (1990)] showed that children with early acquired deafness demonstrated speech production skills superior to those of children with congenital deafness both before and after they had received cochlear implants. In the previous study, however, speech production changes were analyzed without regard for type of implant used by the child. This study examined changes in speech production in terms of age at onset of deafness (congenital or acquired before age 3) and type of implant (single-or multichannel). Speech samples were obtained in the pre-implant condition and at four, 6-month post-implant intervals. The subjects with acquired deafness produced phonetic features with greater accuracy than did the subjects with congenital deafness in the pre-implant condition. At all post-implant intervals, the subjects with acquired deafness who received the single-channel implant demonstrated better speech skills than those of the children with congenital deafness. In contrast, the speech skills of the children with congenital deafness who received multichannel cochlear implants appeared to approximate, over time, those of the children with acquired deafness over time. [Work supported by NIH-NIDCD.]