Child implant users enjoy music more than adult implant users. Moreover, younger age at implantation increases children's engagement with music, which may enhance their progress in other auditory domains.

Congenitally deaf Japanese children with cochlear implants were tested on their recognition of theme songs from television programs that they watched regularly. The children, who were 4-9 years of age, attempted to identify each song from a closed set of alternatives. Their song identification ability was examined in the context of the original commercial recordings (vocal plus instrumental), the original versions without the words (i.e., karaoke versions), and flute versions of the melody. The children succeeded in identifying the music only from the original versions, and their performance was related to their music listening habits. Children gave favorable appraisals of the music even when they were unable to recognize it. Further research is needed to find means of enhancing cochlear implants users' perception and appreciation of music.

CONGENITALLY DEAF CHILDREN (5-10 years) who use cochlear implants and hearing children of comparable age sang songs from memory. Analyses of their performances revealed timing similarities in the songs of deaf and hearing children but substantial differences in pitch patterning. Whereas hearing children accurately reproduced the relative pitch patterns of the songs they sang, deaf children did not. Deaf children's pitch range was considerably smaller than that of hearing children, and their pitch changes were unrelated to the direction of pitch change in the target songs. For child implant users, the power and pleasure of music may arise primarily from its rhythm. Received February 2, 2006, accepted July 22, 2006Key words: singing, children, deaf, pitch, timing, cochlear implant C OCHLEAR IMPLANTS ARE BECOMING THE prostheses of choice for many deaf children and adults. In general, the devices, which convert acoustic input into electrical signals that are transmitted to the brain (Loizou, 1999), enable deaf adults to perceive speech effectively in favorable (i.e., quiet) listening environments. These implants also enable many congenitally deaf children to acquire the spoken language