Audio-Visual Integrative Abilities of Prelingually Deafened Children with Cochlear Implants: A First Report1

Abstract. Although there has been a great deal of recent empirical work and new theoretical interest in audio-visual perception of speech in both normal-hea ing and hearing-impaired adults, relatively little is known about the development of these abilities and skills in deaf children with cochlear implants (CIs). This study examined the way in which children integrate visual speech cues available in the talker’s face with auditory speech cues provided by their CIs to enhance spoken language comprehension. A measure of audiovisual integration ability, R, developed by Sumby and Pollack (1954), was computed using sentence comprehension scores obtained from the Common Phrases Test that was administered using auditory and audiovisual conditions. R represents the amount of gain provided in the AV condition relative to the possible gain in performance in the A condition. Because R is normalized relative to absolute performance in the A condition, R measures the ability of a perceiver to utilize and integrate combined auditory and visual information. The results of our analyses indicated that children who were better at recognizing isolated words through listening alone were also better at combining and integrating the complementary information about articulation that is available unde