Pre-lingually deaf children can perform as well as post-lingually deaf adults using cochlear implants

Abstract Both pre-lingually deaf children and post-lingually deaf adults benefit from cochlear implants. These adults have a memory for speech sounds, but the children do not. In this preliminary investigation, we asked whether it was possible for these children to obtain high scores similar to the adults. We compared 21 pre-lingually deaf children to 81 post-lingually deaf adults using multichannel cochlear implants on the same test of sentence recognition. The children were selected to have the vocabulary and language sufficient to complete the test. Scores from the children, ranged from 0 to 97% correct. About one half of the children scored above 70% correct. Scores from the adults ranged from 0 to 100% correct with about one half of the adults scoring over 60%. Many of the children are scoring as well or better than adults are scoring. We conclude that the auditory system of pre-lingually deaf children is sufficient to obtain levels of speech recognition similar to postlingually deaf adults