Age-Related Performance on Vowel Identification and the Spectral-temporally Modulated Ripple Test in Children With Normal Hearing and With Cochlear Implants.

The sample was small, with 12 children with cochlear implants contributing 22 implant ears. Results may be unstable. The study compared children at one time point and did not follow them over time. It cannot show change within a child. The children with cochlear implants were only 11 to 17 years old. Findings may not apply to younger children. Only children who scored 80% or higher on vowel identification in quiet were tested in noise. Noise results reflect a higher-performing subgroup. The study did not measure attention, memory, reading, or cognitive abilities. These factors could have affected test scores. Aided hearing age and chronological age were highly correlated because many children received hearing aids early. Those variables are hard to separate. The CI processor may distort ripple stimuli above about 1.46 RPO. Very high SMRT thresholds are hard to interpret. Analyses of first- and second-implanted ears separately had small samples. Those analyses were less likely to find effects.

The paper names the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders as funder. It also lists NIH P30 DC004661 in participant recruitment.

Do not conclude that longer implant use causes better speech perception or that children will keep improving indefinitely. The study compared different children at one time point, included 12 children with cochlear implants, and did not follow each child over time.