The basic goal is to measure auditory speech perception capacity in aided and implanted children. Results will be used to establish efficacy of cochlear implants in children and to contribute to candidacy decisions. A key to this work is the use of outcome measures that are: a) maximally sensitive to sensory capacity, b) minimally sensitive to cognitive and linguistic status, and c) predictive of later development of sentence-level speech perception. Without such measures there is a clear danger that deaf children will receive implants that provide less auditory capacity than was already available by amplification. Previous work supports the conclusion that a measure of the ability to perceive phonetic contrasts, presented in a varying phonetic context, meets these requirements The tasks so far used to obtain this measure, however, require either that the child be at least 7 years old or, if younger, that basic speech skills are established.
Aims for proposed research are: 1. to develop a behavioral test of phonetic contrast perception, suitable for prephonological 3 year old children, in which the child must detect and respond only to deviant utterances in a stream of repeated utterances 2. to develop an electrophysiological approach to obtaining the same information, using the same stimuli and the mismatch negativity response, 3. to validate the measure of phonetic contrast perception as a predicator of sentence-level speech perception in older aided and implanted children, 4. to measure the limits of personal hearing aids in terms of permitting full use of auditory capacity in severely and profoundly deaf children, 5. to determine, in implanted adults, the increase of auditory sensory capacity made possible by modified speech processing strategies developed under project #3. If successful, the results will provide valid data on the sensory consequences of amplification and cochlear implantation as treatments for severe and profound childhood deafness. They will also increase the objectivity of predictions of outcome, with and without implants, during discussions of individual candidacy.

Project Start
1998-04-01
Project End
1999-03-31
Budget Start
1997-10-01
Budget End
1998-09-30
Support Year
17
Fiscal Year
1998
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
CUNY Graduate School and University Center
Department
Type
DUNS #
620128194
City
New York
State
NY
Country
United States
Zip Code
10016
Kosky, Christine; Boothroyd, Arthur (2003) Validation of an on-line implementation of the Imitative test of Speech Pattern Contrast perception (IMSPAC). J Am Acad Audiol 14:72-83
Boothroyd, Arthur; Boothroyd-Turner, Dorothy (2002) Postimplantation audition and educational attainment in children with prelingually acquired profound deafness. Ann Otol Rhinol Laryngol Suppl 189:79-84
Plant, G; Gnosspelius, J; Levitt, H (2000) The use of tactile supplements in lipreading Swedish and English: a single-subject study. J Speech Lang Hear Res 43:172-83
Martin, B A; Boothroyd, A (2000) Cortical, auditory, evoked potentials in response to changes of spectrum and amplitude. J Acoust Soc Am 107:2155-61
Mackersie, C; Neuman, A C; Levitt, H (1999) A comparison of response time and word recognition measures using a word-monitoring and closed-set identification task. Ear Hear 20:140-8
Martin, B A; Boothroyd, A (1999) Cortical, auditory, event-related potentials in response to periodic and aperiodic stimuli with the same spectral envelope. Ear Hear 20:33-44
Smith, L Z; Levitt, H (1999) Consonant enhancement effects on speech recognition of hearing-impaired children. J Am Acad Audiol 10:411-21
Mackersie, C; Neuman, A C; Levitt, H (1999) Response time and word recognition using a Modified-Rhyme monitoring task: list equivalency and time-order effects. Ear Hear 20:515-20
Ostroff, J M; Martin, B A; Boothroyd, A (1998) Cortical evoked response to acoustic change within a syllable. Ear Hear 19:290-7
Kennedy, E; Levitt, H; Neuman, A C et al. (1998) Consonant-vowel intensity ratios for maximizing consonant recognition by hearing-impaired listeners. J Acoust Soc Am 103:1098-114

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