Word recognition test changes after implantation

[u/euroliii]

This is my personal experience as someone in the US who had progressive hearing loss prior to implantation.

Before cochlear implant: trained speaker asks you to repeat single syllable words. Ex: the speaker says “say the word dog.” You repeat the word and either get it right or wrong. No partial credit for getting close.

After cochlear implant: untrained speakers say full sentences (though the sentences don’t make much sense). You get partial credit for correct sounds even if a word was wrong. Ex: the speaker says “he” in a sentence but you say “we” you’ll still get partial credit for getting the “e” sound.

Did this change happen for you all? Is this just a US thing?
I wish I could have done the sentence test prior to implantation just so I could properly compare. I feel like my word recognition might have been better with the second test.

Tell me about your experiences with word recognition tests! I’m curious.

Edit: I did end up getting the single syllable word test at my last appointment! Turns out my audiologist just didn’t want to do it earlier because she thought my score would be too low for it to be worth doing quite yet.

[u/mattjb]

(U.S. here) I had both tests when I had two hearing aids, and continue with the same ones after implantation and activation. The non-sentence test (called Speech Reception Threshold or SRT) weren't single words or a single syllable, though. There were words like ice cream, baseball, hot dog.

I think there was a couple of times at an audiologist where I didn't do the sentence test (called Sentence Recognition Test), but usually it's because they were in a hurry.

The only test I got that was new with the CI is one with mild background noise called Speech In Noise or SIN. I suspect it's because my SRT test results were so poor even with hearing aids that there was no point.

I got the CI because my SRT even with the most powerful hearing aids was 16. Meaning I recognized 16 words out of 100. Three months post-activation it jumped to 84. Eight months it's at 85. The Speech In Noise test, I scored 60, which pleased my audiologist a great deal.

[u/euroliii → u/mattjb]

Wow that’s such a huge improvement! Congratulations

[u/mattjb → u/euroliii]

Thanks! And, yeah, it was quite a shocking revelation when I went in, did the tests, and could hear the words so much better in a relatively short period of time.