Children with cochlear implants in both ears appear to have difficulty controlling the loudness and pitch of their voices, but these measures improve over time, according to a report in the January issue of Archives of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
"Cochlear implants provide the perception of sound through the conversion of sound stimuli into electrical impulses, which are received by the cochlear nerve and processed by the central auditory system," the authors write as background information in the article. "Although cochlear implants do not restore sound perception as experienced by an individual with normal hearing, the implant provides the user with auditory feedback in the domains of timing, intensity and frequency of sound. These auditory feedback cues may be critical for the user to monitor his or her speech production and to make purposeful moment-to-moment adjustments in voicing."
Theresa Holler, M.D., and colleagues at The Hospital for Sick Children, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, assessed 27 children age 3 to 15 who had cochlear implants in both ears. Participating children were asked to voice the vowel "a" for three seconds at a comfortable pitch and volume. Three repetitions of this voice testing were averaged, analyzed digitally and compared with acoustic results of children who had an implant in one ear and also with norms for hearing children.