Introduction Despite significant improvements there is a high variability in speech understanding
with cochlear implants (CI). In addition to bottom-up processes "top-down" mechanisms
play an important role in decoding the speech signal. Therefore, the aim of the study
was to rule out whether differences in cognitive and linguistic abilities may explain
speech outcome.
Method 15 postlingually deaf adult CI recipients with a maximum speech perception of 30 %
and 19 CI with at least 70 % in the Freiburger monosyllabic test underwent a visually
presented cognitive and linguistic test battery assessing attention, memory, inhibition,
working memory, lexical access, phonological input lexicon and automatic naming.
Results Speech outcome is determined mainly by linguistic and less by cognitive skills (canonical
r=0.68, p=0.0075). In 91.7 % speech outcome could be predicted by rapid naming speed.
Furthermore, CI users with poor speech perception scored significantly lower in lexical
access (p=0.017*) and in phonological input lexicon (p=0.0039**). CI users with good
speech outcome showed better cognitive skills, most prominent in attentional tasks
(p=0.003**).
Discussion Phonologically based deficits in fast automatic speech processing seem to be crucial
for speech outcome in CI users and should be trained postoperatively. Preoperative
testing may allow a better prediction of speech outcome.
Poster-PDF
A-1060.pdf
