Emotional Perception of Music in Children with Unilateral Cochlear Implants

Introduction: Cochlear implantation (CI) improves language skills among children with hearing loss. However, children with CIs still fall short of fulfilling some other needs, including musical perception. This is often attributed to the biological, technological, and acoustic limitations of CIs. Emotions play a key role in the understanding and enjoyment of music. The present study aimed to investigate the emotional perception of music in children with bilaterally severe-to-profound hearing loss and unilateral CIs.   Materials and Methods: Twenty-five children with congenital severe-to-profound hearing loss and unilateral CIs and 30 children with normal hearing participated in the study. The children’s emotional perceptions of music, as defined by Peretz (1998), were measured. Children were instructed to indicate happy or sad feelings fostered in them by the music by pointing to pictures of faces showing these emotions.   Results: Children with CI obtained significantly lower scores than children with normal hearing, for both happy and sad items of music as well as in overall test scores (P