title: Mandarin consonant contrast recognition among children with cochlear implants or hearing aids and normal-hearing children.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The purpose of the present study was to investigate the consonant recognition of Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants (CIs) and hearing aids (HAs) and to determine if they reach a level of consonant recognition similar to that of normal-hearing (NH) children.
  
  
  BACKGROUND
  Little information is available in the literature regarding the consonant perception abilities of prelingually deafened young children with either CIs or HAs. No studies have compared Mandarin-Chinese consonant contrast recognition in CI and HA children.
  
  
  METHODS
  Forty-one prelingually deafened children with CIs, 26 prelingually deafened children with HAs, and 30 NH children participated in this study. The 3 groups were matched for chronologic age (3-5 yr). The hearing-impaired groups were matched for age at fitting of the devices, duration of device use, and aided hearing threshold. All subjects completed a computerized Mandarin consonant phonetic contrast perception test.
  
  
  RESULTS
  CI and HA children scored, on average, approximately 8 percentage points below the mean NH group performance on the consonant contrast recognition. Approximately 40% of the CI and HA children had not reached a performance level of the NH group. No significant differences in the consonant recognition scores were found between the CI and HA groups. Age of implantation was correlated with consonant contrast recognition in the CI group.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  When age at fitting of the devices, duration of device use, and aided thresholds are matched at the group level, consonant recognition is similar between the CI and HA children after 2 years of device use. Early implantation tends to yield better consonant contrast recognition in the young children with CIs. However, a large amount of variance in performance was not accounted for by the demographic variables studied.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Hearing and Speech Sciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Qiaoyun
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Ning
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.forename: Rebecca
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Berger
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.forename: Li
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Xu
mesh_terms: D002675:Child, Preschool; D019929:Cochlear Implantation; D003054:Cochlear Implants; D003638:Deafness / Q000534:rehabilitation / Q000601:surgery / Q000628:therapy*; D005260:Female; D006310:Hearing Aids; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D019986:Persons with Hearing Disabilities; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*