Evidence of echoic memory with a multichannel cochlear prosthesis.

Short-term memory was examined in a subject with a multichannel cochlear prosthesis. Serial recall for lists of digits revealed what are widely regarded as the principal hallmarks of echoic memory, namely the recency effect and the suffix effect. Thus, probability of recall increased for the last one or two digits, except when a nominally irrelevant but spoken item was appended to the to-be-remembered list. It appears, therefore, that a multichannel cochlear implant can give rise to not only the perception of, but also an echoic memory for, speech. As with normal subjects, the suffix effect did not occur with a nonspeech suffix, implying that the echoic memory from the prosthesis shows normal sensitivity to the distinction between speech and nonspeech.