Auditory Selective Attention Hindered by Visual Stimulus in Prelingually Deaf Children With Cochlear Implants.

Objective: To compare the influence of visual distractors on the performance of auditory selective attention between prelingually deaf children with a CI (cochlear implant) and children with normal-hearing. Design: Twenty-two patients who had a cochlear implant device (10 males and 12 females, aged 6.64 +/- 0.99 yrs) and 16 normal-hearing children (6 males and 10 females, aged 6.09 +/- 0.51 yrs) were recruited. Half of the auditory stimuli were presented together with visual stimuli, and participants were required to complete an auditory identification task. Reaction times and discriminability (d') for these two groups were recorded and calculated. Results: The normal-hearing group had shorter mean reaction times than the CI group in detecting auditory targets. With visual distraction, the d' of the normal-hearing group was significantly better than that of CI group (t = 2.649, p = 0.012), while no statistical significance was found between the two groups without visual distraction (t = 0.693, p = 0.493). Conclusion: Enhanced processing of visual stimuli interferes with auditory perception in CI users by occupying the capacity-limited attention.