Cognitive Predictors of Improvements in Adults’ Spoken Word Recognition Six Months after Cochlear Implant Activation

Abstract

This study investigated whether cognitive measures obtained prior to cochlear implant surgery activation could predict improvements in spoken word recognition in adult cochlear implant recipients 6 months after activation. In addition to noncognitive factors identified by previous studies (i.e. younger age, shorter duration of hearing loss), the present results indicated that improvement in spoken word recognition was associated with higher verbal learning scores and better verbal working memory. Contrary to expectation, neither general cognitive ability nor processing speed was significantly correlated with outcome at 6 months. Multiple regression analyses revealed that a combination of verbal learning scores and lip-reading skill accounted for nearly 72% of the individual differences in improvement in spoken word recognition (i.e. the variance in spoken word recognition scores at 6 months that remained unexplained after controlling for baseline spoken word recognition scores). These findings have relevance for research on auditory processing with cochlear implants as well as implications for clinical interventions.

Factors affecting predicted speech intelligibility with cochlear implants in an auditory model for electrical stimulation

“…Haumann et al (2010) found that postoperative speech intelligibility prediction in CI users using a weighted summed correlation procedure was improved when the TRT test results were included. This is also in line with Heydebrand et al (2007), who documented the importance of cognitive variables, e.g., verbal learning, to the outcome, and thus may explain part of the remaining prediction variance. Consequently, the internal noise could possibly be fitted as a function of the TRT test or other cognitive test results.…”

Auditory working memory predicts individual differences in absolute pitch learning

“…This view of working memory and category learning closely resembles what has been argued in speech, in which listeners must shift attention to diagnostic cues while filtering out information that is not diagnostic for learning (Nusbaum & Schwab, 1986). Indeed, working memory has been shown to predict the efficacy of understanding cochlear implant (CI) speech in both children (Fagan, Pisoni, Horn, & Dillon, 2007) and adults (Heydebrand, Hale, Potts, Gotter, & Skinner, 2007). CI speech is inherently a perceptual learning task, as individuals must learn to remap their acoustic-to-phonetic categories onto degraded speech sounds.…”

Predictive Factors of Cochlear Implant Outcomes in the Elderly

“…A limited number of studies examined whether lipreading ability may contribute to cochlear implant outcome. In a multivariate analysis including 37 adult patients (mean age: 54 years; range: 24-80), Heyderbrand et al [2007] reported that lipreading is strongly correlated with age, and that verbal learning and lipreading account for 72% of the variance in word recognition in quiet observed at 6 months. Behavioral and brain imaging studies demonstrate a cross-modal reorganization of the visual and auditory strategies induced by deafness.…”