Single-channel to multichannel conversions in pediatric cochlear implant recipients.

Speech perception skills were measured in five children who had received a 3M/House single-channel cochlear implant and were subsequently upgraded to a multichannel cochlear implant (Nucleus). A rationale was developed based upon performance with the single-channel device and anticipated performance with the multichannel device. All subjects demonstrated improved acoustic thresholds with the multichannel device. Three of the children demonstrated improvements on identification tasks and two on word recognition tasks.