Development of Visual Attention Skills in Prelingually Deaf Children Who Use Cochlear Implants

Abstract

Objective-To determine the effects of length of cochlear implant use and other demographic factors on the development of sustained visual attention in prelingually deaf children and to examine the relations between performance on a test of sustained visual attention and audiological outcome measures in this population.Design-A retrospective analysis of data collected before cochlear implantation and over several years after implantation. Two groups of prelingually deaf children, one >6 years old (N = 41) and one <6 years old (N = 47) at testing, were given an age-appropriate Continuous Performance Task (CPT). In both groups, children monitored visually presented numbers for several minutes and responded whenever a designated number appeared. Hit rate, false alarm rate, and signal detection parameters were dependent measures of sustained visual attention. We tested for effects of a number of patient variables on CPT performance. Multiple regression analyses were conducted to determine if CPT scores were related to performance on several audiological outcome measures.Results-In both groups of children, mean CPT performance was low compared with published norms for normal-hearing children, and performance improved as a function of length of cochlear implant use and chronological age. The improvement in performance was manifested as an increase in hit rate and perceptual sensitivity over time. In the younger age group, a greater number of active electrodes predicted better CPT performance. Results from regression analyses indicated a relationship between CPT response criterion and receptive language in the younger age group. However, we failed to uncover any other relations between CPT performance and speech and language outcome measures.Conclusions-Our findings suggest that cochlear implantation in prelingually deaf children leads to improved performance on a test of sustained visual processing of numbers over 2 or more years of cochlear implant use. In preschool-age children who use cochlear implants, individuals who are more conservative responders on the CPT show higher receptive language scores than do individuals with more impulsive response patterns. Theoretical accounts of these findings are discussed, including cross-modal reorganization of visual attention and enhanced phonological encoding of visually presented numbers.Prelingually deaf children with cochlear implants are a unique clinical population to study because they have experienced a period of auditory deprivation before the development of significant speech and language skills. The success of many deaf children in acquiring Copyright © 2005 NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript spoken language from the electrical stimulation provided by a cochlear implant is impressive. Although clinical outcomes have been found to be quite variable in this population Pisoni, Cleary, Geers, & Tobey, 2000;Sarant, Blamey, Dowell, Clark, & Gibson, 2001), the scores of most children on a range of speech perception, langua...

Adaptive Functioning in Students with Cochlear Implants Assessed in Spain through the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire

“…These results are similar to those gathered by Horn, Davis, Pisoni and Miyamoto (2005) who carried out a study that aimed to analyze the development of attention skills in children with cochlear implants. They demonstrated that even though after the implantation process the children continued to present very poor results in the tasks aimed at evaluating their ability to sustain their attention, these results improved slightly after several years using the cochlear implant.…”

“…Furthermore, along the lines of Dye and Hauser (2014), Horn, Davis et al (2005) and Yucel and Derim (2008) it is important to note the high percentage of classroom teachers and speech, language and hearing specialist teachers who expressed that the implanted students displayed difficulties to stay attentive throughout the completion of tasks. Some studies (Quittner et al, 2007, Quittner et al 1994Smith, Quittner et al1998) suggest that even though in the months following implantation there are substantial improvements in the tasks that require greater and sustained visual attention, it is not until the children have reached 8 or 9 years of age that they are able to make better use of the cochlear implant due to the strong relationship that exists between the level of performance required in each task and the age of the children.…”

Acoustic Temporal Modulation Detection in Normal-Hearing and Cochlear Implanted Listeners: Effects of Hearing Mechanism and Development

“…In addition, auditory deprivation has been implicated in reorganization of visual attention processes to favor a wider spatial distribution of selective attention (Bavelier et al 2000(Bavelier et al , 2001Proksch and Bavelier 2002;Rothpletz et al 2003). Furthermore, the development of sustained attention in children with PLD may be positively influenced by the degree of early auditory access (Quittner et al 1994;Smith et al 1998;Horn et al 2005). Obviously, children with better behavioral control, selective and sustained attention could be expected to be better at any psychoacoustic task including amplitude modulation detection.…”

As implicações do implante coclear para desenvolvimento das habilidades de linguagem: uma revisão da literatura

“…Only one survey focused on the visual skills 32 . When comparing groups of children with normalhearing and cochlear implant users in visual attention tasks, the study found that cochlear implant users showed improved visual attention after two years of using the device, with gains in reading and writing processes.…”