Early implants perform best
A new study suggests that children who are given cochlear implants before the age of 30 months are more able to combine what they hear and what they see than those who receive their implants when they are older.
According to Dr. Eric I. Knudsen of the University of Maryland and his colleagues, individuals with normal hearing typically report hearing the syllable "ta" when they hear an audio recording of one syllable while watching a video recording of a speaker saying a different syllable, such as "pa" or "ka".
Knudsen says this effect demonstrates that, in most people, the central nervous system combines visual information from the face with acoustic information in creating the speech percept.
The authors used this concept to test 36 children ages 5 to 14 years who were deaf since birth and who had used cochlear implants for at least a year, and 35 normal hearing children.
They presented the children with each combination of the two syllables "pa" and "ka" 10 times.
The article can be found here: http://www.news-medical.net/?id=14860
