Communication is the way we have to interact with the world, this communication can be verbal or nonverbal. For the satisfactory progress of oral communication, it is necessary that the auditory pathway, from the central portion to the peripheral portion, is functioning properly. When there is a change in the auditory pathway, it is necessary to use devices that aid the perception of sound, among these instruments we highlight the cochlear implant, but for the proper use of this resource, an efficient rehabilitation is essential. Objective: To develop a cochlear implant simulator with the purpose of enabling the rehabilitator to identify the stimulus received by the hearing impaired, and thus to act in the schedules of the rehabilitation sessions, so that the sounds can be detected correctly, favoring the development or maintenance of the oral communication. Methods: For the development of the study, 3 groups of individuals were formed: the first group consisted of 6 implanted patients who received as pure sound stimulus. Groups 2 and 3 were composed of normo-listeners who received the sounds filtered by the cochlear implant simulator; group 2 with 22 individuals received filtered sounds for 22 activated channels (100%) and group 3 perceived filtered sounds with 17 channels activated (77%), corresponding to the number of channels activated in a cochlear implant. All participants were submitted to sessions with audiovisual stimuli in software running on a computer with a touch screen. The stimuli are 124 words extracted from a list used in the logoaudiometry exam, being 16 trisyllables, 46 disyllables and 62 monosyllables. The trisyllables words were generated synthetically and the others recorded in female voice of speech therapist. Results: It was observed that all groups presented greater difficulty in the detection of monosyllables, where the latency period was increased, and more errors occurred for sound perception, this is due to the reduction of the auditory track. Therefore, if there is an individualized rehabilitation treatment, it is believed that the development of the implanted hearing impaired is more efficient.
|
