Evaluation of phoneme discrimination, working memory and quality of life in individuals diagnosed with inner ear malformations

The aim of this thesis study was to compare the phoneme discrimination, attention, memory and quality of life scores of 7-10 year old children with bilateral IP- II diagnosed with bilateral cochlear implant and hearing aid users with normal anatomy with their normal hearing peers. For this purpose, 46 hearing aid or cochlear implant users and 12 normal hearing individuals aged 7-10 years were included. In the study, the working Memory Scale' was used to evaluate verbal and visual working memory skills, 'The Stroop Test and Pointing Test' to evaluate attention and neurocognitive skills, 'The HEAR-QL Questionnaire' to evaluate functional outcomes of hearing skills, 'A§E Phoneme Discrimination Test' to evaluate phoneme discrimination, and 'Rapid Naming Test' to evaluate reading speed. A statistically significant difference was found in verbal memory skills between the groups, but no significant difference was found in visual memory scores. In the marking test, a significant difference was obtained in general time. No significant difference was obtained between the groups in the Rapid Naming Test. There was a significant difference between the groups in the HEAR-QL questionnaire. There was a significant difference between the groups in the A§E test. The results suggest that children with moderate to profound hearing loss may differ from their peers in terms of memory, attention, speech, and quality of life even if they use hearing aids in the early period. It was observed that individuals with IP-II had lower verbal memory scores and that the overall memory scores of cochlear implant users with normal anatomy were in the lower categories. These findings suggest that with the right and early intervention, IP-II anomalies may show similar or better results than their peers with normal anatomy. While selective attention skills of individuals with hearing loss were not affected, differences with their normal hearing peers were observed in skills requiring sustained attention. These data emphasize the importance of rehabilitation programs that integrate memory, attention, and speech perception.