Speech Perception by Infants after Cochlear Implantation

描述(由申请人提供)：本研究项目的总体目标是开发基于行为的方法，为临床医生和研究人员提供新的工具，在人工耳蜗植入前和植入后定期评估聋儿的听觉-知觉处理技能。印第安纳大学医学院建造了一个新的实验室，用于实施发育科学家广泛使用的两种行为程序，以研究听力正常婴儿的言语感知和语言发育。婴儿坐在电视监视器前面的音响室里，从那里可以播放听觉和视觉刺激。在视觉习惯化(VH)程序中，测量婴儿对不同类型的语音反应的视觉显示的持续时间。在优先看范式(PLP)中，婴儿首先被呈现两个新词/新物配对。曝光后，他们被呈现给视觉对象和其中一个新词。测量他们对这两个物体的注视时间，以确定他们是否更长时间地注视与新词配对的视觉对象。在我们的初步研究中，这两种技术已经被采用并用于20名聋儿植入前后的测试。我们建议利用越南船级社和公共规划来达到四个具体目标。在具体目标1中，我们将使用VH来评估聋儿植入前后的选择性注意和言语辨别能力。在具体目标2中，我们将使用VH来评估聋儿在使用CI几个月后对其母语的特定语段和超段性质的敏感度。在具体目标3中，我们将使用PLP来测量和评估聋儿在使用CI几个月后的单词学习技能。最后，在具体目标4中，我们将评估婴儿在上述测试中的表现与他们后来在2至4岁时的言语和语言技能之间的关系，这将使用传统的临床结果衡量标准来衡量。这项拟议的研究解决了紧迫的临床问题，即很早植入人工耳蜗会对聋儿的言语和语言发展产生潜在的好处。这些新措施将为临床医生和研究人员提供跟踪个别婴儿在获得早期基本听觉和语言处理技能方面的进展的工具，这些技能为以后的言语和语言发展奠定了基础。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The overall objective of this research project is to develop behaviorally based methodologies that will provide clinicians and researchers with new tools for assessing auditory-perceptual processing skills of deaf infants before and at regular intervals following cochlear implantation. A new laboratory has been constructed at the Indiana University School of Medicine to implement two behavioral procedures that have been used extensively by developmental scientists to study speech perception and language development in normal hearing infants. Infants are seated in a sound booth in front of a TV monitor from which auditory and visual stimuli are presented. In the Visual Habituation (VH) procedure, the duration of infants' looking times to a visual display in response to different types of speech sounds is measured. In the Preferential Looking Paradigm (PLP), infants are first presented with two novel-word/novel-object pairings. After exposure, they are then presented with both visual objects and one of the novel words. Their looking times to the two objects is measured to determine if they look longer to the visual object that was paired with the novel word. These two techniques have been adapted and used to test 20 deaf infants before and after implantation in our preliminary studies. We propose to use the VH and PLP to address four specific aims. In Specific Aim 1, we will use VH to assess deaf infants' selective attention and speech discrimination skills before and longitudinally after implantation. In Specific Aim 2, we will use VH to assess deaf infants' sensitivity to language-specific segmental and suprasegmental properties of their native language after several months of experience with a CI. In Specific Aim 3, we will use the PLP to measure and assess deaf infants' word learning skills after several months of CI use. Finally, in Specific Aim 4, we will assess the relations between infants' performance on the above tests and their later speech and language skills at 2 to 4 years of age, which will be measured using traditional clinical outcome measures. The proposed research addresses pressing clinical issues regarding the potential benefits of very early cochlear implantation on deaf infants' speech and language development. These new measures will provide clinicians and researchers with tools for tracking individual infants' progress in acquiring early fundamental auditory and linguistic processing skills that provide the foundation for later speech and language development.