Open AccessSpatial Release From Masking in Pediatric Cochlear Implant Recipients With Single-Sided Deafness
Author(s) -
Lisa Park,
Margaret T. Dillon,
Emily Buss,
Brendan P. O’Connell,
Kevin D. Brown
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
american journal of audiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.688
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1558-9137
pISSN - 1059-0889
DOI - 10.1044/2020_aja-20-00119
Subject(s) - audiology , cochlear implant , medicine , cochlear implantation , active listening , speech perception , masking (illustration) , binaural recording , hearing aid , sound localization , sentence , hearing loss , psychology , communication , computer science , perception , art , neuroscience , artificial intelligence , visual arts
Purpose Children with single-sided deafness (SSD) experience difficulty understanding speech in multisource listening situations. Case reports and retrospective studies have indicated that a cochlear implant (CI) may improve masked speech recognition in children with SSD. This prospective study was conducted to determine whether providing a CI to children with SSD supports spatial release from masking (SRM), an improvement in speech recognition associated with separating the target and masker sources. Method Twenty children with at least a moderate-to-profound hearing loss in one ear and normal hearing in the contralateral ear underwent cochlear implantation. The average age of implantation was 5.5 years (range: 3.5-12.7). After 12 months of CI use, subjects completed a sentence recognition task in multitalker masker with and without the CI. The target was presented from the front, and the masker was either colocated with the target (0°) or from the side (+90° or -90°). A two-way repeated-measures analysis of variance was completed to investigate SRM with and without the CI. Results Pediatric CI recipients experienced significant SRM when the masker was directed to the normal-hearing ear or to the affected ear. Conclusions The results indicate that cochlear implantation in children with SSD supports binaural skills required for speech recognition in noise. These results are consistent with improved functional communication in multisource environments, like classrooms.