Tehran University of Medical Sciences Auditory and Vestibular Research 2423-480X 31 3 2022 07 05 232 237 EN Mahdiye Tavakoli Department of Speech Therapy, School of Rehabilitation Sciences, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran Nahid Jalilevand Department of Speech Therapy, School of Rehabilitation Sciences, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran AND Rehabilitation Research Center, School of Rehabilitation Sciences, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran Mohammad Kamali Department of Rehabilitation Management, School of Rehabilitation Sciences, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran Yahya Modarresi Department of Linguistics, Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies, Tehran, Iran Masoud Motasaddi Zarandy Otorhinolaryngology Research Center, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran AND Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, Amir A’lam Hospital, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran 2021 10 14 2022 01 11 Background and Aim: Cochlear implants (CIs) can lead to the development of verbal communication in areas such as sound repertoire, speech intelligibility (SI), and conversational skills. The SI refers to the ability to make recognizable speech sounds. Children with CIs may experience poorer SI than normalhearing (NH) children. This study aims to compare the SI between children with CIs and NH peers matched for chronological age and hearing age. Methods: The speech samples of 40 monolingual Persian-speaking children, including 20 children with CIs and 20 NH children were used in this study. The children’s SI was analyzed using three measures of the percentage of correct consonants, percentage of correct vowels, and percentage of intelligible words. One speech-language pathologist and two non-professional listeners transcribed each speech sample. Results: The results showed no significant difference in any measures of SI between CI children and NH hearing age-matched peers, but there was a significant difference between CI children and NH chronological age-matched peers (p<0.05). Conclusion: The SI in Persian-speaking children with CIs is the same as in NH hearing age-matched peers, but it was poorer compared to NH chronological age-matched peers. If the children with hearing impairments receive CIs sooner, their SI can be greater. Cochlear implantation improves SI by increasing the hearing experience. https://avr.tums.ac.ir/index.php/avr/article/view/1013 https://avr.tums.ac.ir/index.php/avr/article/download/1013/469