Performance is better for children who are implanted when younger than age four. Intensive auditory training should include training in detection of sounds as well as recognition of closed sets of spoken works. More recent changes in candidacy criteria are leaning toward relaxing that criterion. The performance of children with some residual hearing has resulted in a recommendation to include them in the selection group. Further research detailing changes with respect to duration of implant use, significance of age of onset of deafness, and age of implantation is needed.
Some adults can recognize sounds in an open set with hearing alone.
Adult cochlear implant users are primarily individuals who have learned language and then lost their hearing. The purpose of cochlear implants for children is to enable them to develop spoken language. The benefits of implants that have been shown in research include increased capacity for spoken language acquisition. This has been observed as children move from no recognition to substantial open set recognition within six months as contrasted to much longer times required for hearing aid users to attain this level of performance. The enhanced information about sound that is available to the user is one of the major benefits of implants when contrasted to conventional hearing aids.