ABSTRACT
Objective The aim of this study is to study the musical ability,auditory ability and speech intelli-gibility and their relationship in children with artificial hearing devices,and to provide clinical evidence for the hear-ing and speech rehabilitation for children with hearing loss.Methods A total of 27 children (14 boys and 13 girls) with prelingual sensorineural hearing loss from Zibo participated in this study.Their hearing levels were from mod-erate to profound.Their chronological ages at evaluation ranged from 9 to 95 months with a mean of 42 months. Their chronological ages at intervention ranged from 1 to 72 months with a mean of 26 months.Their hearing ages at evaluation ranged from 1 to 60 months with a mean of 16 months.They all wore bilateral aids.Musical Ears, CAP and SIR were used to evaluate their musical ability,auditory ability and speech intelligibility,respectively.A linear and regression analysis was done in the statistic procedure.Results The means and standard deviations of the scores of musical ability,auditory ability,and speech intelligibility were 27.1±16.7,4.4±1.9,2.8±1.4,respec-tively.The scores of musical ability and auditory ability were significantly correlated (r= 0.856,P<0.001).The scores of musical ability and speech intelligibility were also significantly related (r= 0.827,P<0.001).Conclusion The musical ability is closely related to auditory ability in children with bilateral aided hearing.The musical ability is also closely related to speech ability for this group of children.