Background and Aim: Although the ability of speech perception has been improved in implanted subjects with recent progress in technology, cochlear implantation alone is not enough and more aural rehabilitation is necessary. The aim of this study was to assess improvement of speech perception in children with cochlear implant.
Methods: Fourteen cochlear implanted children with a mean age of 5.5 years participated in this study. Auditory training was performed in 10 to 43 sessions. Speech recognition and perception were evaluated every 3 months. Third evaluation was done only for 4 patients.
Results: Mean total score of the first evaluation was 43.21%, of the second was 63.76%, and of the third evaluation was 78%. All children obtained complete score for sound awareness at the first evaluation. In environmental sounds discrimination, 71.3%, 84.36%, and 100% answered completely to the questions of three evaluations respectively. In speech sounds discrimination, 34.7% in the first, 57.04% in the second, and 85% in the third evaluation obtained the complete score, and in auditory memory, complete responses were 21% for the first, 57.12% for the second, and 83% for third evaluation. In story rephrasing and comprehension, no one answered to questions completely. However, 12.83% obtained the complete score in the second and third evaluations. There were statistically significant differences between the first and the second evaluation (p=0.002(.
Conclusion: Sound awareness ability seems to be achieved rapidly. Development of speech and environmental sound discrimination abilities, particularly speech comprehension which is the most important skill, need more impressive training.

Background and Aim: Phonological processing skills include the abilities to restore, retrieve and use memorized phonological codes. The purpose of this research is to compare and evaluate phonological processing skills in 6-7 year old blind and sighted Persian speakers in Tehran, Iran.
Methods: This research is an analysis-comparison study. The subjects were 24 blind and 24 sighted children. The evaluation test of reading and writing disorders in primary school students, linguistic and cognitive abilities test, and the naming subtest of the aphasia evaluation test were used as research tools.
Results: Sighted children were found to perform better on phoneme recognition of nonwords and flower naming subtests and the difference was significant (p<0.001). Blind children performed better in words and sentence memory the difference was significant (p<0.001). There were no significant differences in other subtests.
Conclusion: Blind children&aposs better performance in memory tasks is due to the fact that they have powerful auditory memory.