Evaluation of speech discrimination skills with video visual reinforcement audiometry in pediatric cochlear implant users

Speech perception assessment has an important role in the audiologic test battery to investigate hearing loss in the prelinguistic period and to determine the appropriate amplification strategy. In order to evaluate the perception of speech in infants, it is necessary to use a test battery that gives objective results. Visual Reinforcement Infant Speech Discrimination (VRISD) is the most commonly used test technique for assessing speech discrimination in infants. This study, we compared the VRISD test results of 12 pediatric cochlear implant users aged range from 12 to 36 months and 12 babies with normal hearing aged range from 6 to 13 months. In the VRISD test protocol, / a - i / and / ba -da / speech stimuli were matched to create test stimuli. One of these stimulus pairs is ordered to be the target sound and the other is the background sound, and the repetitive sound sequence is created and presented at 70 dB through the loudspeaker in audiometric booth. Animated video that attracted the baby's attention was used as visual reinforcement. In this study, the mean VRISD test results of the normal hearing group babies were found to be 3.66 and 1.09 for /a - i / stimulus and /ba - da/ stimulus, respectively. The mean VRISD test results of the babies in the cochlear implant group were 4.53 and 0.6 for the /a - i/ stimulus and /ba - da/ stimulus, respectively. There was no significant difference between the VRISD test results of both groups (p<,05). A high positive correlation was found between the Infant-Toddler Meaningful Auditory Integration Scale (IT-MAIS) scores of the cochlear implant group and VRISD test results (p <.05). It was concluded that the VRISD test can be used safely to evaluate the development of speech perception in cochlear implant users. Key words: Visual reinforcement audiometry, cochlear implant, speech audiometry, speech perception in infants,video visual reinforcement audiometry