The time course for reacquisition of spondee word recognition was examined for 27 patients who use the Ineraid cochlear. implant. At 1 month postfitting, test scores ranged from 0 to 84% correct. The median score was 10% correct. At 22 to 28 months postfitting, the scores ranged from 0 to 100% correct. The median score was 56% correct. The rate of improvement in spondee recognition varied greatly within the sample. Most patients continued to extract new information from the electrically evoked representation of the speech signal over a period of a year or more.