Article

Auditory training has been shown to significantly improve cochlear implant (CI)
users' speech and music perception. However, it is unclear whether posttraining
gains in performance were due to improved auditory perception or to generally
improved attention, memory, and/or cognitive processing. In this study, speech
and music perception, as well as auditory and visual memory, were assessed in 10
CI users before, during, and after training with a nonauditory task. A visual
digit span (VDS) task was used for training, in which subjects recalled sequences
of digits presented visually. After the VDS training, VDS performance
significantly improved. However, there were no significant improvements for most
auditory outcome measures (auditory digit span, phoneme recognition, sentence
recognition in noise, digit recognition in noise), except for small (but
significant) improvements in vocal emotion recognition and melodic contour
identification. Posttraining gains were much smaller with the nonauditory VDS
training than observed in previous auditory training studies with CI users. The
results suggest that posttraining gains observed in previous studies were not
solely attributable to improved attention or memory and were more likely due to
improved auditory perception. The results also suggest that CI users may require
targeted auditory training to improve speech and music perception.

Langue : ANGLAIS