Materials and Methods
In order to compare speech discrimination abilities of the users of the two most
recent speech-processing strategies of Nucleus 22 Cochlear Implant System, 13 postlingually deafened adults who have been using multipeak (MPEAK) strategy for between
6 months and 5 years borrowed Spectra 22 mapped with spectral peak (SPEAK) strategy
for 1 month. The sentence and phoneme discrimination scores were then obtained using
both SPEAK and MPEAK strategies under the conditions of both hearing only and of
hearing and lip-reading combined. The results were analyzed with the subjects being
divided into four groups according to duration of hearing loss and number of active electrodes (table 1).
Results
The scores were best in the order of the groups with: (1) duration of hearing loss of less than 10 years and with more than 10 electrodes; (2) duration of
hearing loss of less than 10 years and with less than 9 electrodes; (3) duration
of hearing loss of more than 11 years and with more than 10 electrodes, and (4)
duration of hearing loss of more than 11 years and with less than 9 electrodes
in both under the condition of hearing only (table 2), and that of hearing and
lip-reading combined (table 3). The better the score, the greater the difference
scores between MPEAK and SPEAK strategies. The scores obtained with
SPEAK were greater than those with MPEAK in the best two groups.