Assessing consonant production in children with cochlear implants.

Objective: The objective of this study was to investigate the development of consonant inventory and accuracy in pediatric cochlear implant (CI) recipients and compare their performance to typical hearing (TH) children.

Methods: One hundred and twenty nine children with CIs, implanted between 6-38 months of age, and 30 age-matched children with TH participated in this study. Spontaneous speech samples were collected at 3.

The Lombard effect observed in speech produced by cochlear implant users in noisy environments: A naturalistic study.

The Lombard effect is an involuntary response speakers experience in the presence of noise during voice communication. This phenomenon is known to cause changes in speech production such as an increase in intensity, pitch structure, formant characteristics, etc., for enhanced audibility in noisy environments.

Prior exposure to a reverberant listening environment improves speech intelligibility in adult cochlear implant listeners.

Objectives: The goal of this study is to investigate whether prior exposure to reverberant listening environment improves speech intelligibility of adult cochlear implant (CI) users.

Methods: Six adult CI users participated in this study. Speech intelligibility was measured in five different simulated reverberant listening environments with two different speech corpuses.

Self-esteem in children and adolescents with hearing loss.

Children with hearing loss are at risk for lower self-esteem due to differences from hearing peers relative to communication skills, physical appearance, and social maturity. This study examines the influence of generic factors unrelated to hearing loss (e.g.

Evaluation of adaptive dynamic range optimization in adverse listening conditions for cochlear implants.

The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of Adaptive Dynamic Range Optimization (ADRO) on speech identification for cochlear implant (CI) users in adverse listening conditions. In this study, anechoic quiet, noisy, reverberant, noisy reverberant, and reverberant noisy conditions are evaluated. Two scenarios are considered when modeling the combined effects of reverberation and noise: (a) noise is added to the reverberant speech, and (b) noisy speech is reverberated.

Assessment of health-related quality of life 6 years after childhood cochlear implantation.

Purpose: To examine the impact of cochlear implant (CI) intervention on health-related quality of life (HRQOL) assessed by both self- and parent-reported measures.

Methods: In this national study of children implanted between ages 6 months and 5 years, HRQOL of 129 children 6-year post-CI was compared to 62 internal study (NH1) and 185 external (NH2) samples of hearing children frequency-matched to the CI group on sociodemographic variables. HRQOL ratings of children and their parents in each group, measured using the Child Health and Illness Profile-Child Edition, were compared, and their associations with the Family Stress Scale were investigated.

Age-dependent cost-utility of pediatric cochlear implantation.

Objectives: Cochlear implantation (CI) has become the mainstay of treatment for children with severe-to-profound sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL). Yet, despite mounting evidence of the clinical benefits of early implantation, little data are available on the long-term societal benefits and comparative effectiveness of this procedure across various ages of implantation-a choice parameter for parents and clinicians with high prognostic value for clinical outcome. As such, the aim of the present study is to evaluate a model of the consequences of the timing of this intervention from a societal economic perspective.

Influence of implantation age on school-age language performance in pediatric cochlear implant users.

Objective: This study examined specific spoken language abilities of 160 children with severe-to-profound sensorineural hearing loss followed prospectively 4, 5, or 6 years after cochlear implantation.

Study Sample: Ninety-eight children received implants before 2.5 years, and 62 children received implants between 2.

A comparative study of psychosocial development in children who receive cochlear implants.

Objectives: This study assessed self-reported quality of life of children with a cochlear implant (CI), comparing results with two published reports from the past decade.

Methods: Participants included 33 pediatric CI recipients with a mean age of 10.12 years (SD = 3.

Cochlear implantation updates: the Dallas Cochlear Implant Program.

This report provides an overview of many research projects conducted by the Dallas Cochlear Implant Program, a joint enterprise between the University of Texas at Dallas, the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, and Children's Medical Center. The studies extend our knowledge of factors influencing communication outcomes in users of cochlear implants. Multiple designs and statistical techniques are used in the studies described including both cross sectional and longitudinal analyses.

Timing of cochlear implantation and parents' global ratings of children's health and development.

Objective: To assess children's health-related quality of life (HRQL) and development after cochlear implant (CI) surgery and compare improvements between different age of implantation categories.

Study Design: Prospective, longitudinal study comparing outcomes of deaf children post-CI with hearing controls.

Setting: Six US CI centers.

Language development after cochlear implantation: an epigenetic model.

Growing evidence supports the notion that dynamic gene expression, subject to epigenetic control, organizes multiple influences to enable a child to learn to listen and to talk. Here, we review neurobiological and genetic influences on spoken language development in the context of results of a longitudinal trial of cochlear implantation of young children with severe to profound sensorineural hearing loss in the Childhood Development after Cochlear Implantation study. We specifically examine the results of cochlear implantation in participants who were congenitally deaf (N = 116).

Factors contributing to speech perception scores in long-term pediatric cochlear implant users.

Objectives: The objectives of this report are to (1) describe the speech perception abilities of long-term pediatric cochlear implant (CI) recipients by comparing scores obtained at elementary school (CI-E, 8 to 9 yrs) with scores obtained at high school (CI-HS, 15 to 18 yrs); (2) evaluate speech perception abilities in demanding listening conditions (i.e., noise and lower intensity levels) at adolescence; and (3) examine the relation of speech perception scores to speech and language development over this longitudinal timeframe.

Epilogue: factors contributing to long-term outcomes of cochlear implantation in early childhood.

Objectives: This report focuses on how speech perception, speech production, language, and literacy performance in adolescence are influenced by a common set of predictor variables obtained during elementary school in a large group of teenagers using cochlear implants (CIs).

Design: Time-lag analyses incorporating seven common predictor variables associated with the elementary school test period were evaluated. The elementary school-age variables included five contributors across the performance domains: gender, performance intelligence quotient, family size, socioeconomic status, and duration of deafness (operationally defined as the time period between the age of implantation and the onset of deafness).

Factors influencing speech production in elementary and high school-aged cochlear implant users.

Objectives: The objectives of this study were to (a) evaluate changes in speech intelligibility in a group of 110 adolescent users of cochlear implants who were first assessed in elementary school (CI-E) and later in high school (CI-HS) and (b) examine factors influencing speech intelligibility performance at the CI-E and CI-HS sessions.

Design: Participants were 110 adolescents who participated in an earlier study examining 181 young elementary school-aged children. Primary outcome measures included speech intelligibility under quiet and multispeaker background conditions and consonants correct produced in the sentences.

Long-term outcomes of cochlear implantation in early childhood: sample characteristics and data collection methods.

Objectives: This article describes participants in a follow-up study of a nationwide sample of children who had used a cochlear implant (CI) since preschool. The children were originally tested when they were in early elementary grades, and results were published in a monograph supplement of Ear and Hearing. Recently, many of these children returned for follow-up testing when they were in high school with >10 yrs experience with a CI.

Article 1: Long-Term outcomes of cochlear implantation in early childhood: Sample characteristics and data collection methods.

Articles contained in this monograph describe the communication performance of 112 teenagers who received multichannel cochlear implants between the ages of 2 and 5 years. Children were first tested during the elementary school years when they were 8 or 9 years of age. They also were tested as adolescents when they were between 15 and 18 years old.

Spoken word recognition in adolescent cochlear implant users during quiet and multispeaker babble conditions.

Objective: To assess overall speech intelligibility in adolescent cochlear implant speakers during quiet and multispeaker babble conditions.

Study Design: A cross-sectional assessment of intelligibility incorporating group (auditory-oral versus total communication speakers), sentence context (high versus low contexts), and background conditions (quiet versus multispeaker babble).

Setting: A camp designed to assess adolescents over a concentrated period.

Health-related quality of life in children and adolescents who use cochlear implants.

Objective: Examination of health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in children and adolescents who wear a cochlear implant (CI) primarily has depended on parent proxy report of the child's HRQoL rather than child self-report and generic domains rather than CI-specific issues. This study simultaneously assessed self-report ratings on a generic HRQoL instrument and a preliminary CI module in pediatric CI users. The impact of demographic factors (chronologic age, age at CI, and CI experience) on HRQoL also was explored.

Cross-modal plasticity and speech perception in pre- and postlingually deaf cochlear implant users.

Objective: A great amount of variability is observed in speech perception outcomes with cochlear implants. The mechanisms behind the observed variability need to be elucidated. One possible mechanism contributing to the observed variability is the development of cross-modal plasticity.

Spoken language development in children following cochlear implantation.

Context: Cochlear implantation is a surgical alternative to traditional amplification (hearing aids) that can facilitate spoken language development in young children with severe to profound sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL).

Objective: To prospectively assess spoken language acquisition following cochlear implantation in young children.

Design, Setting, And Participants: Prospective, longitudinal, and multidimensional assessment of spoken language development over a 3-year period in children who underwent cochlear implantation before 5 years of age (n = 188) from 6 US centers and hearing children of similar ages (n = 97) from 2 preschools recruited between November 2002 and December 2004.

The children speak: an examination of the quality of life of pediatric cochlear implant users.

Objective: To examine the results of health-related quality-of-life questionnaire scores from profoundly deaf children fitted with at least one cochlear implant (CI) and to compare their responses with those of normal-hearing mates of similar age and their parents.

Study Design: Cross-sectional study utilizing a generic quality-of-life questionnaire designed to be completed by both parents and children independently of each other.

Setting: Questionnaires completed at various summer camps designed for children with CIs in Texas and Colorado.