Speech training holds promise for cochlear implant recipients

By Christopher Walsh, medwireNews Reporter

medwireNews: Behavioral speech therapy programs are effective and efficient for training speech sound production in adults who have received a cochlear implant (CI), exploratory research findings show.

While admitting that the preliminary nature of their study precludes meaningful inferences for this population, the researchers nevertheless advocate "the establishment of an evidence based speech therapy protocol for this group of individuals."

Aural rehabilitation (AR) programs for adult CI recipients are sparse, and speech production training is not a primary element of AR programs offered by dedicated CI centers.

According to authors Frances Pomaville and Chris Kladopoulos, both from California State University in Fresno, USA, their findings "should encourage more speech-language pathologists to develop similar therapy programs for this population and should encourage CI Centers to include behavioral speech therapy as a primary component in existing AR programs."

The study was designed to assess whether a behavioral speech therapy protocol improved the pronunciation of "target" speech sounds when spoken in words of various length, either in isolation or during spontaneous conversation.

The three participants included in the study had prelingual or early bilateral sensorineural hearing loss of a severe-to-profound or profound nature, and had received a CI between 1.0 and 7.5 years prior to the study.

After initial assessment, the researchers selected three target speech sounds for each participant. For the 4- to 5-week duration of the study, the participants were scheduled for two weekly 1-hour therapy sessions, during which they were trained to correctly pronounce words containing their target speech sounds.

Visual inspection of the data and calculation of effect size revealed positive trends in correct speech production as a result of treatment in all the participants and for all three target speech sounds.

Improvements were observed in the pronunciation of isolated words, as measured by Arizona-3 articulation proficiency testing, and during spontaneous conversation.

Furthermore, speech therapy improved pronunciation regardless of whether or not the target sounds were part of words that had been used as training examples during therapy.

The authors note that further research is needed, owing to the various limitations of their study, such as the small sample size, short treatment duration and a lack of post-treatment follow up.

"Replication of the present and similar research findings can further substantiate the efficacy of behavioral speech therapy for CI recipients, " conclude Pomaville and Kladopoulos in The Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research.

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