Cochlear implant users receive limited spectral and temporal information. Their speech recognition deteriorates dramatically in noise. The aim of the present study was to determine the relative contributions of spectral and temporal cues to speech recognition in noise. Spectral information was manipulated by varying the number of channels from 2 to 32 in a noise-excited vocoder. Temporal information was manipulated by varying the low-pass cutoff frequency of the envelope extractor from 1 to 512 Hz. Ten normal-hearing, native speakers of English participated in tests of phoneme recognition using vocoder processed consonants and vowels under three conditions (quiet, and +6 and 0 dB signal-to-noise ratios). The number of channels required for vowel-recognition performance to plateau increased from 12 in quiet to 16-24 in the two noise conditions. However, for consonant recognition, no further improvement in performance was evident when the number of channels was > or =12 in any of the three conditions. The contribution of temporal cues for phoneme recognition showed a similar pattern in both quiet and noise conditions. Similar to the quiet conditions, there was a trade-off between temporal and spectral cues for phoneme recognition in noise.

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Noise and reverberation have a significant effect on BCI users, and their localization ability can be evaluated using these virtual tests.