Audiovisual speech perception in elderly cochlear implant recipients.
OBJECTIVE
This study examined the speech perception skills of a younger and older group of cochlear implant recipients to determine the benefit that auditory and visual information provides for speech understanding.


METHODS
Retrospective review.


METHODS
Pre- and postimplantation speech perception scores from the Consonant-Nucleus-Consonant (CNC), the Hearing In Noise sentence Test (HINT), and the City University of New York (CUNY) tests were analyzed for 34 postlingually deafened adult cochlear implant recipients. Half were elderly (i.e., >65 y old) and other half were middle aged (i.e., 39-53 y old). The CNC and HINT tests were administered using auditory-only presentation; the CUNY test was administered using auditory-only, vision-only, and audiovisual presentation conditions


RESULTS
No differences were observed between the two age groups on the CNC and HINT tests. For a subset of individuals tested with the CUNY sentences, we found that the preimplantation speechreading scores of the younger group correlated negatively with auditory-only postimplant performance. Additionally, older individuals demonstrated a greater reliance on the integration of auditory and visual information to understand sentences than did the younger group


CONCLUSIONS
On average, the auditory-only speech perception performance of older cochlear implant recipients was similar to the performance of younger adults. However, variability in speech perception abilities was observed within and between both age groups. Differences in speechreading skills between the younger and older individuals suggest that visual speech information is processed in a different manner for elderly individuals than it is for younger adult cochlear implant recipients.
Hay-McCutcheon
Marcia J
MJ
Department of Otolaryngology--Head and Neck Surgery, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, 46202, USA. mhaymccu@indiana.edu
Pisoni
David B
DB
Kirk
Karen Iler
KI
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology; D019929:Cochlear Implantation; D003939:Diagnostic Techniques, Otological; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*