Auditory and Audiovisual Close Shadowing in Post-Lingually Deaf Cochlear-Implanted Patients and Normal-Hearing Elderly Adults

Abstract

Faster reaction times were observed for oral than for manual responses in all groups, suggesting that perceptuo-motor relationships were somewhat successfully functional after cochlear implantation and remain efficient in the NHE group. These results are in agreement with recent perceptuo-motor theories of speech perception. They are also supported by the theoretical assumption that implicit motor knowledge and motor representations partly constrain auditory speech processing. In this framework, oral responses would have been generated at an earlier stage of a sensorimotor loop, whereas manual responses would appear late, leading to slower but more accurate responses. The difference between oral and manual responses suggests that the perceptuo-motor loop is still effective for NHE subjects and also for cochlear-implanted participants, despite degraded global performance.