Perceptual studies on cochlear implant patients with early onset of profound hearing impairment prior to normal development of auditory, speech, and language skills.

Psychophysical studies were conducted on three prelingual and two postlingual cochlear implant patients. Auditory sensations were produced by electrical stimulation of the residual nerve fibers of the auditory nerve by means of a multiple-electrode cochlear implant. The psychophysical performance of the prelinguals was, in general, poorer than that of the postlinguals; prelingual performance was poorer for repetition rate and electrode position identification, gap detection, and durational and numerosity judgments. Improved performance with time, however, was consistently observed for the prelinguals in the above-mentioned psychophysical tasks. There were significant individual differences in the amount of improvement among the three prelinguals. Speech perception studies were also conducted on the three prelingual patients. The speech perception performance of the three prelingual patients was much poorer than that of postlingual patients in general, and was consistent with their poorer psychophysical performance described above.