Three experiments were undertaken involving three users of multi-electrode cochlear prostheses. The experiments established a scale of stimulus loudness; measured minimum-detectable gaps for sinusoidal stimuli as functions of stimulus level, frequency, and electrode place within the cochlea; and assessed independence of the electrodes using a…

The study demonstrates that, with a brief training period, deaf adolescents (N=8) can attain a high level of perceptual performance with a tactual speech system in discrimination of certain hard to lipread word pairs pronounced by both a male and a female speaker. (Author/SBH)

A two-microphone adaptive digital noise cancellation technique improved word-recognition ability for 20 normal and 12 hearing-impaired adults by reducing multitalker speech babble and speech spectrum noise 18-22 dB. Word recognition improvements averaged 37-50 percent for normal and 27-40 percent for hearing-impaired subjects. Improvement was best…

The study sought to evaluate open-set word recognition in 54 French, English, and German patients using 5 different kinds of cochlear implants. Three experiments assessed their word recognition in word lists and sentences, environmental sound perception, and gap detection. (Author/JDD)

This article reviews current knowledge in three areas: (1) characteristics of mild/moderate hearing loss; (2) the information-bearing aspects of speech; and (3) the relationship between the electroacoustic characteristics of hearing aids and the speech signal. Implications for selecting hearing aids are drawn. (Author/DB)

The speech perception performance of 10 congenitally deaf and 3 postlingually deafened children who received multichannel cochlear implants were compared at preimplant and 6-month intervals up to 2 years. The congenitally deaf children did not exhibit measurably improved performance until after 12 months or more of implant use, whereas…

This study found that children with early onset of deafness who received single-channel or multichannel cochlear implants before age 10 demonstrated higher speech intelligibility than children receiving their device after age 10. There was no obvious difference in speech intelligibility scores as a function of type of device (implant or tactile…

Eight young children with prelingual deafness were tested with the Phonetic Level Evaluation (PLE) before receiving a cochlear implant and four times afterward. Correlations between the PLE and spontaneous speech measures were weak, suggesting that performance on the PLE has low predictive value for vowel and diphthong production during…

Thirty children with profound hearing impairments were followed over a three-year period with a semiannual battery of speech perception tests. Testing utilized multichannel tactile vocoders in variations of tactile and/or auditory/visual conditions. Performance in the tactile plus auditory condition generally exceeded that in other conditions,…

Prelinguistically deafened children (n=28) with cochlear implants performed imitative and structured spontaneous sampling speech tasks. Results found children who had used implants for at least two years acquired some intelligible speech; children who received implants before five years of age showed greater benefit than later recipients; and…