Acoustic and articulatory development in deaf and heard of hearing children after pediatric auditory brainstem implantation

Auditory brainstem implantation (ABI) is still in its infancy in pediatric populations (Puram and Lee, 2015). For children born with a severe-to-profound hearing loss who cannot benefit from cochlear implants (CI), ABI is shown a valid option for (partial) hearing restoration (Sennaroglu et al., 2016). Research has already showed the perceptual benefits after ABI implantation (Sennaroglu et al., 2016). However, fairly little is known about the effect of ABI implantation on speech production development. We aim to study the acoustic and articulatory development of these children in comparison to children with CI and typical hearing. Our design is longitudinal: the spontaneous speech of three cases is recorded monthly up to four years after implantation. Acoustic features of vowels after two years of device use suggest smaller vowel spaces in children with ABI than in children with CI. There is a clear effect on phonological development: the children produce an increasing amount of ambient language phonemes with longer device use and extended vocabulary size. Nevertheless, the children have lower phonological complexity and production (accuracy) then children with CI and typical hearing. Despite the (individual) differences, ABI implantation shows a positive effect on oral language production in children with severe-to-profound hearing loss.