人工耳蝸兒童語音聽辨能力與聆聽生活品質表現之相關性

本研究旨在探討人工耳蝸兒童的語音聽辨能力與聆聽生活品質表現之關係。研究參與者包括20名7歲至12歲的單耳或雙耳植入人工耳蝸兒童，以及20名年齡匹配的聽力正常兒童作為對照組。研究採用聲調和詞彙聽辨測驗，評估兩組兒童對單音節與多音節詞的聲調及詞彙之聽辨能力，並搭配聽覺相關生活品質問卷，瞭解兒童平時在各種環境、活動與感受等三個層面的聆聽狀況。結果顯示，人工耳蝸兒童的聲調聽辨能力明顯落後於聽力正常兒童，尤其是單音節詞的聲調聽辨分數差異最大。然而，兩組兒童在詞彙聽辨能力上表現相近。在日常聆聽生活品質方面，人工耳蝸兒童整體表現明顯低於聽力正常兒童，特別是在嘈雜環境和人群聚集場合中遇到較大困難。特別值得關注的是，人工耳蝸兒童的單音節聲調聽辨能力與活動相關聆聽生活品質滿意度呈負相關，這意味著聽辨能力較佳的兒童對活動相關的聆聽生活品質滿意度較低，而聽辨能力較差者的滿意度反而較高。此發現突顯客觀聽辨表現與主觀生活品質感受之間的複雜關係，而這種負相關只在單音節聲調聽辨測驗中出現，值得未來研究進一步探究其中的原因。

This study investigated the relationship between speech recognition ability and hearing-related quality of life performance in children with cochlear implants (CI), involving 20 CI children aged 7-12 and 20 age-matched children with normal hearing. The study employed Mandarin tone and lexical recognition tests to assess children's ability to recognize Mandarin tones in both monosyllabic and polysyllabic words, as well as their lexical recognition ability. Additionally, the hearing-related quality of life questionnaire was utilized to understand their listening conditions in various environments, activities, and feelings. The results revealed that CI children significantly underperformed normal-hearing children in Mandarin tone recognition ability, with the largest gap in monosyllabic tone recognition scores. Nevertheless, the two groups of children exhibited comparable lexical recognition ability. CI children had lower hearing-related quality of life overall than normal-hearing children, especially in noisy and crowded environments. Notably, there is a negative correlation between CI children's monosyllabic tone recognition ability and their satisfaction with activity-related listening, suggesting that children with better recognition ability tend to have lower satisfaction, while those with poorer ability tend to have higher satisfaction. The result emphasizes the complex relationship between objective speech recognition ability and subjective quality of life. This negative correlation was only observed in the monosyllabic tone recognition test, warranting further investigation.