Data from: Consonant perception and error patterns in children and adults with cochlear implants

This study investigated the effects of age and hearing history on
consonant perception scores and confusion patterns in early implanted
youth (i.e., child-implanted) and post-lingually implanted adults (i.e.,
adult-implanted), as well as in participants with normal hearing (NH) who
listened to spectrally degraded (vocoded) stimuli. Vocoded consonant
perception improved with chronological age in children with NH. For the
cochlear implant (CI) users, more auditory experience and shorter
durations of deafness were associated with better consonant perception
scores, especially in child-implanted listeners. Individuals in the
child-implanted group also made significantly more errors in identifying
the voiceless fricative, /θ/, than did adult-implanted listeners.
Individual differences in phoneme error patterns could inform personalized
intervention strategies, and child-implanted listeners might derive
particular benefit from interventions that improve access to formant
transitions or high-frequency energy. Moreover, while CI experience and
early implantation benefit many CI users of all ages, delayed intervention
may be more detrimental to the speech perception outcomes of prelingually
deafened than post-lingually implanted individuals.