The purpose of this study is to determine whether children can gain benefit from training
on pitch and music perception. Our main goals were to prepare a tool for training
pitch and rhythm perception and evaluate musical attitude in children, to determine
whether pitch and rhythm perception improve more rapidly through training and to assess
the impact of training on speech perception.
A family centred habilitation program based on musical training is developed. Nine
newly implanted children who were switched on in HiRes and trained from the outset
and 9 children using HiRes strategy who did not receive training both undergo assessments
to determine pitch and rhythm perception skills and speech perception assessments.
Music group was formed by the children who were implanted consecutively. As a control
group, children who are being followed for another study which examines "the changes
of sound quality perception, speech understanding, speech production, and communication
mode" are included. The speech perception test battery contains a comprehensive range
of age appropriate tasks covering detection, discrimination, identification, recognition
and comprehension abilities. Also meaningful auditory integration scale (MAIS) or
infant-toddler MAIS (if more appropriate) and the meaningful use of speech scale (MUSS)
were administered in order to collect information about children's use of sound in
everyday situations such as device bounding, alerting to sound and deriving meaning
from auditory stimuli. Musical training program was based on a take-home electric
keyboard which is used for listening to different pairs of notes. For this study,
three octaves and one extra note at the high end of the keyboard were used. Children
were expected to discriminate a pair of notes. Assessments of speech perception at
pre-implant, 1-, 3-, 6-, 12-, 24-months post switch-on. By the end of the first and
second years, parents were given the 'musical stages questionnaire' which covers some
of the key areas of musical development to compare both groups' musical development.
Children who were involved in music study demonstrated significant familiarity in
both determining pitch differences. No significant difference was found between music
group compared with the non-trained group in terms of speech perception (p>0.05).
However, by the end of 3rd month, music group came into prominence particularly at
the rate of being linguistically/developmentally ready to carry out formal modified
open-set speech perception evaluation (p<0.05). Both groups seemed to be developed
similarly in sound awareness and general reaction, differentiating melody, dynamic,
rhythmical changes and emotional aspects of musical development (p>0.05) whereas music
group had more exposure to music at the end of the first year (p<0.05). However, by
the end of the second year music group developed more than the control group in all
aspects of musical skills (p<0.05).
Music training program helps appreciation of music and may enhance their progress
in other auditory domains after cochlear implantation in children. While, effects
of the musical training program on daily listening attitudes and social aspects such
as closer parent-child relationship were significantly observed future training programs
that should strive to improve satisfaction with music listening and its effect on
auditory perception.