Auditory Emotion Recognition in Children With Bilateral Cochlear Implants: Vocal and Musical Stimuli

OBJECTIVE: The objectives of this study were to evaluate auditory emotion recognition in children with bilateral cochlear implants (CIs) using nonlinguistic vocal and musical stimuli, to compare their performance with that of age-matched normal-hearing (NH) peers, and to examine the relationship between auditory emotion recognition and speech perception. DESIGN: Auditory emotion recognition was assessed using the Montreal Affective Voices (MAV) and the Music and Emotion Stimulus (MES) sets, focusing on five emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and surprise. Speech perception was evaluated using speech reception thresholds (SRTs) and word recognition scores (WRSs). STUDY SAMPLE: The study included 29 children with bilateral CIs (study group) and 29 NH children (control group) aged 6-12 years. RESULTS: < .001). The WRS scores of the study group showed significant positive correlations with all MAV and MES scores. CONCLUSIONS: Vocal and musical emotion-recognition performance was associated in children with CIs, suggesting related performance patterns across auditory stimulus types. In addition, the association between word recognition and auditory emotion recognition suggests that speech perception and emotion perception may share broader auditory-perceptual demands.