Visual Implicit Learning and Speech Recognition in Adult Post-Lingual Cochlear Implant Users.

Only implant users who scored above 60% on sentence recognition in quiet were included, so nothing here speaks to patients who struggle even in quiet listening conditions. Everyone was tested once. The link between visual learning and speech in noise is an association; the study cannot tell you whether better visual learning leads to better speech recognition, the reverse, or neither. There were 30 implant users. The implant group's own statistical learning score was positive but did not reach significance (p = .080), so a real effect in this group cannot be ruled out from this sample. The speech tests were too easy for the hearing adults, who scored at or near the top on all of them. That means the hearing group could not be used to test the link between learning and speech recognition, and the comparison between groups rests on the learning tasks alone. The two groups were not tested identically: the implant users were in a sound-treated booth in their best aided condition with speech and noise from a loudspeaker, while the hearing adults wore headphones in a quiet room. The implant group was a well-performing, cognitively similar group to the hearing adults, so the preserved learning seen here may not hold for implant users with lower cognitive scores or poorer speech recognition.

Funded by the Israel Science Foundation (grant number 106/18). The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest.

Do not read this as evidence that training visual pattern learning improves speech recognition. Everyone was tested once, in a single session, so the link between visual learning and speech in noise is an association, and nothing in the study shows that changing one would change the other.