Orna Eran
Arthur Boothroyd
Grad. School, City Univ. of New York, 33 W. 42 St., New York, NY 10036
Cochlear implants are being used extensively in the habilitation and rehabilitation of profoundly and totally deaf children. It is generally accepted that an implant can provide significant access to acoustic speech information to children who cannot obtain this information through more conventional devices. Appropriate decisions regarding implant candidacy can be difficult in this population, however, because many of the children who are potential implantees are too young to perform reliably on tests that measure speech perception capacity. The purpose of this presentation is to describe two tests of speech perception assessment that are used with young deaf children. THRIFT is a three-interval, forced-choice oddity procedure. The results depend on the adequacy of sensory data rather than on cognitive and linguistic status. IMSPAC is an imitative test for children as young as 3 years. In older subjects, scores obtained on IMSPAC correlate with those obtained on the THRIFT. The presentation will include data on applicability, reliability, validity, and efficiency of both tests. [Work supported by NIH Grant No. 2PO1DC00178.]