ESCA Workshop on Audio-Visual Speech Processing (AVSP'97) September 26-27, 1997 Rhodes, Greece

Phonological Representaion and Speech Understanding With Cochlear Implants in Deafened Adults

Björn Lyxell (1), Ulf Andersson (1), Stig Arlinger (2), Henrik Harder (2), Jerker Rönnberg (1)

(1) Departments of Education and Psychology; (2) Technical Audiology, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden

Cognitive performance in 15 deafened adult cochlear implant candidates were examined and related to level of speech understanding after 12 months experience with the implant. The implant group performed on par with normal hearing controls on most tasks with one exception: They performed significantly worse in cognitive tasks (i.e., rhyme-judgement and lexical decision-making tasks) where use of a phonological representation of sound is a key feature. Observations of the implanted individuals' level of speech understanding indicates a possibility to predict the level of speech understanding by means of a preoperative assessment of the quality of the phonological representation. The results are discussed with respect to (a) deterioration in phonological representation of sounds as a function absence of external auditory stimulation and (b) the possibility to pre-operatively predict post-operative level of speech reception performance.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Lyxell, Björn / Andersson, Ulf / Arlinger, Stig / Harder, Henrik / Rönnberg, Jerker (1997): "Phonological representaion and speech understanding with cochlear implants in deafened adults", In AVSP-1997, 45-48.