The pragmatic use of music in the [re]habilitation for children with cochlear implants

The aim of this study is to examine the methods and the primary results of utilizing music in the rehabilitation of children with cochlear implant. In this context, this investigation reviews some of the more-recent research related to music perception with CIs, and how cochlear implantation may impact on music perception in children. Music is sometimes intended to do something rather than simply say something, making it basically pragmatic. One of the most important aims of the present study thus has been to prove the pragmatic role of music in rehabilitation of children with cochlear implants. In this context, it has been realized a case study in the Duy-Kon, a private rehabilatition center in Izmir, Turkey, based on the method of participant-observation by serving as a music teacher. Six prelingual children with CIs users (age 9-14 years) were selected in the Duy-Kon. They were tested with the music that examined rhythm discrimination, pitch ranking, instrument identification, and familiar-melody recognition.The current state of findings suggests that children with CI users are significantly poorer than normally hearing listeners at frequency-based music tests, such as tasks involving pitch perception, instrument identification, or melody recognition while same researchs indicate that those with a cochlear hearing loss, including CI users, have temporal resolution skills equivalent to those of the Normal Hearing population. Let us state at once that this is the case in Duy-Kon. Our experience have shown us that the children with implants who are being taught music find it very amusing and the tiresome process of rehabilitation changes to a fun time for them. All children showed appreciable progress in understanding music, at least some components of music. Understanding rhythm without the trouble helps better performance in syllables understanding, length of words and understanding the count of phonemes. Consequently, music courses given in Duy-Kon proved that there is an important pragmatic role of music in the rehabilitation of children with cochlear implants.