Bimodal benefits in Mandarin-speaking cochlear implant users with contralateral residual acoustic hearing

Abstract

Objective: The present study aimed to measure bimodal benefits and probe their underlying mechanisms in Mandarin-speaking cochlear implant (CI) subjects who had contralateral residual acoustic hearing. Design: The subjects recognised words or phonemes from the Mandarin Lexical Neighborhood Test in noise at a 10-dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) with acoustic stimulation, electric stimulation or the combined bimodal stimulation. Study sample: Thirteen Mandarin-speaking subjects wore a CI in one ear and had residual acoustic hearing in the contralateral ear. Six of the subjects (5.2–13.0 years) had pre-lingual onset of severe hearing loss, and seven of them (8.6–45.8 years) had post-lingual onset of severe hearing loss. Results: Both groups of subjects produced a significant bimodal benefit in word recognition in noise. Consonants and tones accounted for the bimodal benefit. The bimodal integration efficiency was negatively correlated with the duration of deafness in the implanted ear for vowel recognition but positively correlated with CI or bimodal experience for consonant recognition. Conclusions: The present results support preservation of residual acoustic hearing, early cochlear implantation and continuous use of bimodal hearing for subjects who have significant residual hearing in the non-implanted ear.

Key Words:

• Bimodal stimulation
• cochlear implants
• hearing aids
• Mandarin speech recognition
• consonants
• vowels
• tones
• integration efficiency

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank all subjects for their time and dedication. We are indebted to Meei-ling Kuan, Pei-ying Tu, Wen-chen Chiu and Yi-ping Chang at the NWL (National Women’s League) Foundation for the Hearing Impaired and Li Ling, David Ling Jr., Sandy Chang, Rodman Lin and Eddison Hsieh at Dr. Hearing Group for recruiting subjects and providing support for conducting the study in Taiwan. We thank Jiunn-liang Wu at the National Cheng Kung University Hospital, Taiwan for usage of the M-LNT materials. Finally, we thank Lena Wong and three anonymous reviewers for their constructive and insightful comments.

Declaration of interest

The authors report no declaration of interest. This research was supported by National Institutes of Health [1RO1 DC008858] and [P30 DC008369], and National Science Council, Republic of China [NSC-095-SAF-I-564-054-TMS].