Central Coherence on Prosody and Content in Children with Cochlear Implant by Age Using Stimulus-Discrimination Program

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate central coherence and auditory perception ability in children with cochlear implant by age. Methods: The S-D program designed as a computer game was employed to present auditory tasks comprised of recombinations of the prosody and content to 40 cochlear implant (CI) children and 45 normal hearing (NH) children. Results: The findings showed that CI have shown similar performance on most of test (Stimulus, Prosody, Content) to NH. The Central coherence Test performance of CI revealed that their first appearance of central coherence was far behind. Above all, CI aged 5 to 11 showed little preference (weak central coherence) for prosody or content, whereas controls have shown a clear preference for content over prosody. In conclusion, the results of present study suggest that cochlear implant children's difficulties in communication by prosody and content seem to be linked to weakness in central coherence, which are due to distortion of parallel stimulation in cochlear implant. In this regard, it seems necessary to develop technological aspects of cochlear implant. Conclusion: The present study recommends both a well-timed auditory training and using cochlear implant in order to improve the central coherence of hearing impaired children.