Abstract:
The present study aimed to assess speech perception in auditory and audio-visual modes among early and late cochlear implant (CI) children. Further, the perceptual measures i.e. Revised Categories of auditory perception (R-CAP) and Infant Toddler-meaningful auditory integration scales (IT-MAIS) were also obtained for early and late CI children. There were 20 Kannada-speaking children implanted before 3.5 years of age (Early CI; mean implant age: 12.30 months) and after 3.5 years of age (Late CI; mean Implant age: 14 months). All the CI children received CI funds under the government scheme. The speech perception test includes bi-syllabic (BS), tri-syllabic (TS), poly-syllabic (PS), and word identification (WI) presented in audio (A) and audio-visual (AV) modes. The Shapiro-Wilk test showed the non-normal distribution of the data and hence non-parametric test was done. Overall, the mean BS, TS, PS, and WI scores of the late CI users were higher (better) in comparison to the early CI users. Wilcoxon signed rank test showed a statistically significant difference between AV and A mode for BS, TS, PS, and WI scores in each group at 0.05 levels. Further, the Mann-Whitney U test showed a statistically significant difference between early and late CI users in audio conditions for BS (Z=-3.19; p=0.001), TS (Z=-3.85; p=0.000), PS (Z=-2.08; p=0.03), and WI (Z=-3.81; p=0.000) scores. In perceptual measures, there were no statistically significant differences observed between early and late CI children for R-CAP as well as for IT-MAIS. The overall performance of both early and late CI children was good in audio-visual mode whereas, in audio-mode alone, the performance of the early CI children was poorer in comparison to the late CI users.
