The Comparison of Speech Intelligibility between the Cochlear Implanted and Normal-Hearing Children

Following the development of new hearing technologies, assessment of speech intelligibility in hearing-impaired children is of great interest.  The main purpose of this study was to compare speech intelligibility and auditory perception abilities in children with normal-hearing (NH) and children with hearing aid (HA) and cochlear implant (CI).

This analytic cross-sectional study consisted of 60 Persian-speaking children aged 5 to 7-years. Participants were classified into 3 groups of 20 people, including NH (mean age, 71.70±5.05 months), CI (mean age, 72.60±8.20 months), and HA (mean age, 71.45±10.56 months) children. The speech intelligibility rating (SIR) and categories of auditory performance (CAP) tests were conducted for all children to measure their speech intelligibility and auditory perception, respectively. A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) test was used to compare CAP and SIR scores among the 3 groups.

The mean SIR score in the NH children was significantly higher than the HA (p=0.002) and CI (p=0.009) groups. However, these differences between the HA and CI children were not significant (p=0.885). We found a significant difference between the CAP scores in the 3 groups (p=0.038). Furthermore, the post hoc analysis results indicated that the mean CAP scores in NH children were significantly higher than the HA and CI participants. Based on the results, the speech intelligibility and auditory performance abilities in NH children were significantly greater than the hearing-impaired (CI and HA) children. However, these abilities between HA and CI users were not significantly different.

Based on the results, the early acoustical amplification on auditory and speech functions in children with hearing loss is of paramount importance.