Ardışık Bilateral Koklear İmplant Uygulanan Çocuklarda Fonem Ayırt Etme Becerilerinin Değerlendirilmesi

Abstract

It is known that bilateral cochlear implantation has advantages in abilities such as localization of sound and speech perception. Primary aim of the study was to compare the performance differences of phoneme discrimination abilities between the first and second cochlear implanted ear and invastigate whether bilateral cochlear implantation has an advantage on phoneme discrimination abilities. Secondary aims of this study were to evaluate whether there is a significant difference between children with cochlear implants and normal hearing and to investigate the effects of some variables on phoneme discrimination performance. For this purpose, Auditory Speech Sounds Evaluation (ASSE) test was used to compare the speech perception abilities in first, second and bilateral cochlear implanted conditions. 23 children with sequential bilateral cochlear implant and 23 children with normal hearing between the ages of 3 and 6 years were included to the present study. Seven phoneme pairs in ASSE phoneme discrimination test were used as speech stimuli and presented at 70 dB. These pairs are / u / - / a /, / u / - / i /, / i / - / a /, / m / - / z /, / s / - / ʃ /, / z / - / s /, / v / - / z / phonemes. The results showed that the children who use bilateral CI has a positive effect on phoneme discrimination performance and a significant difference was found between the first and second cochlear implanted conditions. However, there was no significant difference between the scores of children with normal hearing and bilaterally cochlear implanted. It was also found that the age of cochlear implantation and the duration of bilateral cochlear implant use have an positive effect on phoneme discrimination performance.