Graeme Clark Collection
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ItemShort-term auditory memory in children using cochlear implants and its relevance to receptive language [Abstract]( 2000)Current work indicates that many children using cochlear implants are able to hear fine differences between speech sounds but are not progressing as wel1 as expected in receptive language ability. There is anecdotal evidence from teachers that some children using cochlear implants have poor short-term auditory memory ability, which may be impeding their language development. Temporal ordering and short-term memory storage capacity involve higher order processing. Severe auditory deprivation prior to implantation may have caused auditory processing deficits at a cortical level. This study aims to assess short-term, sequential, auditory memory ability in children using cochlear implants and to determine the relationship between this ability and receptive language ability. Short-term auditory memory ability has not been previously investigated in profoundly deaf children using hearing aids and/or cochlear implants. Twenty-four children using the 22-electrode cochlear implant were tested on five short-term sequential memory tasks, three with auditory stimuli and two with visual stimuli. There were 8 children in each of the age groups; 5-6 years, 7-8 years, and 9-11 years. Twenty-four age-matched, normally hearing children served as a control group. Al1 children were also assessed on the receptive subtests of the CELF (Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals) and on the nonverbal scale of the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC) which measures nonverbal intelligence. This study assessed short-term auditory memory with tasks that required minimal language ability. Prior to the memory tasks, the child had to demonstrate accurate identification of the stimuli with a similar reaction time to the normally hearing controls. As expected there is a significant effect of age on memory performance for the 24 normally hearing children, with older children performing better than the younger children. The memory performance of the children using cochlear implants is therefore described in terms of its deviation from expected performance for a given chronological age. Preliminary results suggest that it is unlikely that auditory deprivation causes a memory deficit specific to the auditory modality. Performance on visual memory tasks is very similar to performance on analogous auditory memory tasks for a group of implant users. The performance of children using cochlear implants on a variety of memory tasks does not appear to be significantly different to that of normally hearing children who are of similar age and nonverbal intel1igence. In contrast their receptive language scores are substantially inferior.
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ItemA clinical protocol for multiple electrode cochlear implants in children [Abstract]( 1986)A clinical protocol for an experimental study to evaluate the speech perception and production, and communication skills using the multiple electrode cochlear implant in pre-adolescent children has been developed. A single-subject time-series design has been adopted to regularly assess these abilities. During the pre-operative stage the subject's current hearing aids or tactile device are used, and for the post-operative stage the Nucleus multiple electrode intracochlear implant. Training is provided in both stages of the study. Also included in the pre-operative stage are the audiological and medical evaluations to determine whether the subject meets the selection criteria. Speech perception and production, and communication skills are assessed from a large selection of language and developmental-age appropriate materials. Psychophysical studies are also undertaken to measure the subject's abilities to discriminate simple stimuli differing in electrical parameter values.
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ItemThe perception of vowels by hearing impaired children [Abstract]( 1982)This paper reports the results of a series of closed-set vowel identification experiments with four congenitally hearing impaired children (age 13 years) with moderate to profound bilateral sensorineural losses. Material was presented under three test conditions: hearing alone, through currently worn hearing aids; lipreading alone; and hearing plus lipreading. Analysis of the results using multidimensional scaling and hierarchical clustering revealed a strong relationship between the perceptual organisation of the responses and the physical attributes of the method of signal presentation. In the case of acoustic signals, the results indicated a perceptual organisation describable in terms of the duration of the vowel and the relative frequencies of the first and second formant. For visual signals, the perceptual organisation correlated with characteristics of lip-shaping during production. These results indicated that the subjects attempted to use similar perceptual cues as the normally hearing population. The relationship between the perceptual organisation of the acoustic stimuli and the aided audiogram is also discussed.