Effect of signal processing strategy and stimulation type on speech and auditory perception in adult cochlear implant users.
Susan M Reynolds, René H Gifford
PMID 30987476WHAT IT FOUND
In ten adult cochlear implant users, changing among three Advanced Bionics strategies did not improve speech or auditory test scores.
Sequential stimulation gave higher word scores and higher sentence scores in noise than paired stimulation, and listeners rated sound quality higher.
Key findings
01Sequential stimulation produced higher word recognition (72.8% versus 60.5% correct) than paired stimulation, while processing strategy did not significantly affect word scores.
02Sequential stimulation produced higher sentence recognition in noise (28.0% versus 15.6% correct) than paired stimulation, while processing strategy did not significantly affect sentence scores.
03Sequential stimulation produced higher sound quality ratings than paired stimulation (7.1 versus 5.6 on the 1-to-10 scale).
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Only ten participants were studied, and two did not complete some tasks, so the results are preliminary. Familiarisation was two weeks with programme switching every two hours, which may not reflect everyday use and may not have been long enough. Most participants had long-term experience with sequential stimulation, and only two had long-term paired experience. This limits comparison of prior experience. Stimulation rate was not held constant across programmes, so the effect of sequential versus paired stimulation cannot be separated from rate differences. The study used only Advanced Bionics strategies and may not apply to other implant systems. Music and auditory tasks were poor or not validated for CI users, so null results for those measures may reflect task limitations.
Declared interests
The supplied text does not report conflicts or funding; publication types indicate NIH and non-U.S. government research support.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that sequential stimulation should replace paired stimulation for all cochlear implant users. Ten participants were studied, familiarisation was short, and stimulation rate varied with programme, so this cannot prove a lasting clinical benefit.