Effects of congenital hearing loss and cochlear implantation on audiovisual speech perception in infants and children

Abstract

Purpose: Cochlear implantation has recently become available as an intervention strategy for young children with profound hearing impairment. In fact, infants as young as 6 months are now receiving cochlear implants (CIs), and even younger infants are being fitted with hearing aids (HAs). Because early audiovisual experience may be important for normal development of speech perception, it is important to investigate the effects of a period of auditory deprivation and amplification type on multimodal perceptual processes of infants and children. The purpose of this study was to investigate audiovisual perception skills in normal-hearing (NH) infants and children and deaf infants and children with CIs and HAs of similar chronological ages.

Methods: We used an Intermodal Preferential Looking Paradigm to present the same woman's face articulating two words ("judge" and "back") in temporal synchrony on two sides of a TV monitor, along with an auditory presentation of one of the words.

Results: The results showed that NH infants and children spontaneously matched auditory and visual information in spoken words; deaf infants and children with HAs did not integrate the audiovisual information; and deaf infants and children with CIs initially did not initially integrate the audiovisual information but gradually matched the auditory and visual information in spoken words.

Conclusions: These results suggest that a period of auditory deprivation affects multimodal perceptual processes that may begin to develop normally after several months of auditory experience.

Fig. 1

Total looking time at the matching and nonmatching faces in the first and second blocks of the experiment across hearing status. Error bars indicate standard error.

Fig. 2

Looking time differences (looking time to matching face minus looking time to nonmatching face) across levels of pre-amplification unaided hearing thresholds (below and above 70 dB) in infants who use hearing aids. Error bars indicate standard error.

Fig. 3

Looking time differences (looking time to matching face minus looking time to nonmatching face) for infants who received cochlear implants prior to 14 months of age (Early) and after 14 months of age (Late). Error bars indicate standard error.