Capability of Children with Hearing Devices: A Mixed Methods Study.

We investigated 34 deaf and hard-of-hearing children with hearing devices aged 8-12 years and 30 typical hearing peers. We used the capability approach to assess well-being in both groups through interviews. Capability is "the real freedom people have to do and to be what they have reason to value.

Wellbeing as Capability: Findings in Hearing-Impaired Adolescents and Young Adults With a Hearing Aid or Cochlear Implant.

In the Western world, for deaf and hard-of-hearing children, hearing aids or cochlear implants are available to provide access to sound, with the overall goal of increasing their wellbeing. If and how this goal is achieved becomes increasingly multifarious when these children reach adolescence and young adulthood and start to participate in society in other ways. An approach to wellbeing that includes personal differences and the relative advantages and disadvantages that people have, is the capability approach, as developed by Nobel Prize laureate Amartya Sen.

Comparing cochlear implant users' speech performance with processor fittings based on conventionally determined T and C levels or on compound action potential thresholds and live-voice speech in a prospective balanced crossover study.

Objective: The objective of the present study is to improve the efficiency of the fitting procedure of cochlear implant processors by making use of measurements of the electrically evoked compound actio potential (ECAP) and live-voice speech.

Design: In a randomised prospective cross-over design we compare speech performance of eighteen adult subjects when following the conventional fitting procedure to a procedure in which we use the profile of the ECAP threshold levels across the full electrode array measured intra-operatively. The overall level of the profile is shifted (by an equal amount of current units per electrode) until we find the threshold for live speech (new T levels) and the loudness comfort level (new C levels).

Speech perception in nucleus CI24M cochlear implant users with processor settings based on electrically evoked compound action potential thresholds.

Adjusting the speech processor of a cochlear implant, per electrode, to the individual's response is a laborious task that may interfere with a user-friendly start of implant-mediated hearing, particularly in children. This research concerns the possibility of processor adjustment based on a profile derived from measurements of the electrically evoked compound action potential (ECAP) thresholds across the electrode array, followed by adjustment of the overall level of the profile to the hearing threshold and maximum comfortable loudness level using live voice. The results for CVC word lists show that speech perception is quite insensitive to the threshold setting of the speech processor.