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发展基于行为的方法，为临床医生和研究人员提供新的工具，用于评估耳蜗植入前和植入后耳聋婴儿的听觉知觉处理技能。印第安纳大学医学院（Indiana University School of Medicine）建立了一个新的实验室，用于实施两种行为程序，这两种程序已被发育科学家广泛用于研究正常听力婴儿的言语感知和语言发展。婴儿坐在电视显示器前的音响室里，通过电视显示器呈现听觉和视觉刺激。在视觉习惯（VH）过程中，测量婴儿对不同类型的语音反应的视觉显示的持续时间。在优先注视范式（PLP）中，婴儿首先看到两个新单词/新物体配对。暴露后，他们会同时看到视觉对象和一个新单词。研究人员测量了他们看两个物体的时间，以确定他们看与新单词配对的视觉物体的时间是否更长。在我们的初步研究中，这两种技术已被用于20名聋儿植入前后的测试。我们建议使用VH和PLP来实现四个具体目标。在Specific Aim 1中，我们将使用VH纵向评估耳聋婴儿植入前后的选择性注意和言语辨别技能。在具体目标2中，我们将使用VH来评估聋儿在使用CI几个月后对母语特定语言片段和超片段特性的敏感性。在具体目标3中，我们将使用PLP来测量和评估失聪婴儿在使用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测量方法进行测量。本研究旨在探讨早期人工耳蜗植入对聋儿语音和语言发展的潜在益处。这些新措施将为临床医生和研究人员提供工具，以跟踪每个婴儿在获得早期基本听觉和语言处理技能方面的进展，这些技能为后来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.