Music recognition by children with cochlear implants

Poor pitch resolution interferes with cochlear implant users’ ability to recognize music from pitch cues alone. We examined the possibility that prelingually deaf implant users could identify familiar hit songs from commercial recordings presented with or without words. Young implant users 8–18 years of age and age-matched hearing controls attempted to identify original and altered recordings of familiar hit songs. Cochlear implant users succeeded in identifying the songs, with or without words, from a closed set, but they were less accurate than the matched sample of hearing listeners. Unlike their peers with normal hearing, most cochlear implant users were unable to identify the songs from simple piano renditions of the main melody or from bassand-drum renditions. Despite their music processing limitations, these young implantees provided favorable appraisals of the music. D 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.