Children’s Recognition of Emotional Prosody in Spectrally Degraded Speech Is Predicted by Their Age and Cognitive Status

Tinnemore, Anna R.; Zion, Danielle J.; Kulkarni, Aditya M.; Chatterjee, Monita

doi:10.1097/aud.0000000000000546

Cited by 27 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…Some specific neurocognitive skills, such as working memory capacity, appear to be more strongly related to speech perception and recognition and may be more strongly related than more general cognitive abilities, such as nonverbal intelligence (for a review, see Akeroyd) 1 . Working memory (Lyxell et al; 29 Tao et al) 52 as well as inhibitory control (Moberly et al 31 ), verbal learning and memory (Pisoni et al) 25 , and processing speed (Tinnemore et al) 53 have been linked to individual differences in speech recognition among adult CI users. In addition, although a strong relation has not been established, nonverbal reasoning skills have recently been found to be associated with individual performance among postlingually deafened adult CI users, independently of age (Mattingly et al) 30 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

High- and Low-Performing Adult Cochlear Implant Users on High-Variability Sentence Recognition: Differences in Auditory Spectral Resolution and Neurocognitive Functioning

et al. 2020

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Background Postlingually deafened adult cochlear implant (CI) users routinely display large individual differences in the ability to recognize and understand speech, especially in adverse listening conditions. Although individual differences have been linked to several sensory (‘‘bottom-up’') and cognitive (‘‘top-down’') factors, little is currently known about the relative contributions of these factors in high- and low-performing CI users. Purpose The aim of the study was to investigate differences in sensory functioning and neurocognitive functioning between high- and low-performing CI users on the Perceptually Robust English Sentence Test Open-set (PRESTO), a high-variability sentence recognition test containing sentence materials produced by multiple male and female talkers with diverse regional accents. Research Design CI users with accuracy scores in the upper (HiPRESTO) or lower quartiles (LoPRESTO) on PRESTO in quiet completed a battery of behavioral tasks designed to assess spectral resolution and neurocognitive functioning. Study Sample Twenty-one postlingually deafened adult CI users, with 11 HiPRESTO and 10 LoPRESTO participants. Data Collection and Analysis A discriminant analysis was carried out to determine the extent to which measures of spectral resolution and neurocognitive functioning discriminate HiPRESTO and LoPRESTO CI users. Auditory spectral resolution was measured using the Spectral-Temporally Modulated Ripple Test (SMRT). Neurocognitive functioning was assessed with visual measures of working memory (digit span), inhibitory control (Stroop), speed of lexical/phonological access (Test of Word Reading Efficiency), and nonverbal reasoning (Raven's Progressive Matrices). Results HiPRESTO and LoPRESTO CI users were discriminated primarily by performance on the SMRT and secondarily by the Raven's test. No other neurocognitive measures contributed substantially to the discriminant function. Conclusions High- and low-performing CI users differed by spectral resolution and, to a lesser extent, nonverbal reasoning. These findings suggest that the extreme groups are determined by global factors of richness of sensory information and domain-general, nonverbal intelligence, rather than specific neurocognitive processing operations related to speech perception and spoken word recognition. Thus, although both bottom-up and top-down information contribute to speech recognition performance, low-performing CI users may not be sufficiently able to rely on neurocognitive skills specific to speech recognition to enhance processing of spectrally degraded input in adverse conditions involving high talker variability.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

High- and Low-Performing Adult Cochlear Implant Users on High-Variability Sentence Recognition: Differences in Auditory Spectral Resolution and Neurocognitive Functioning

et al. 2020

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“…What we know is that despite CI users’ significant accomplishments in decoding spoken speech from restricted cues ( Shannon et al., 1995 ), discerning the emotional meaning conveyed in the prosody of speech remains challenging by comparison ( Tinnemore et al., 2018 ). While developments to accurately encode a wider array of acoustic features for CI users are underway, enhancing communication outcomes using perceptual and cognitive resources is the focus of the present research.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…The results suggest that the strong pitch salience available to NH listeners generated a more robust representation of emotion cues enabling them to be more tolerant of the acoustic features that are obscured by spectral degradation. Other factors including better linguistic and cognitive abilities in adults than in children have been shown to increase accuracy in identifying emotions from spectrally degraded speech by ( Tinnemore et al., 2018 ).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…While nonsense (e.g., Most & Michaelis, 2012 ) and semantically neutral (e.g., Tinnemore et al., 2018 ) sentences are widely used in experimental task conditions to primarily encourage emotion identification by visual and auditory prosodic cues, it remains to be determined whether similar effects can be achieved with semantically meaningful sentences presented in the same formats. That is, we seek to examine emotion identification in sentences that are semantically congruent with the intended emotional expression in a manner that is akin to how speech is often encountered in everyday conversation.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Multimodal and Spectral Degradation Effects on Speech and Emotion Recognition in Adult Listeners

Ritter

Vongpaisal

2018

Trends in Hearing

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For cochlear implant (CI) users, degraded spectral input hampers the understanding of prosodic vocal emotion, especially in difficult listening conditions. Using a vocoder simulation of CI hearing, we examined the extent to which informative multimodal cues in a talker’s spoken expressions improve normal hearing (NH) adults’ speech and emotion perception under different levels of spectral degradation (two, three, four, and eight spectral bands). Participants repeated the words verbatim and identified emotions (among four alternative options: happy, sad, angry, and neutral) in meaningful sentences that are semantically congruent with the expression of the intended emotion. Sentences were presented in their natural speech form and in speech sampled through a noise-band vocoder in sound (auditory-only) and video (auditory–visual) recordings of a female talker. Visual information had a more pronounced benefit in enhancing speech recognition in the lower spectral band conditions. Spectral degradation, however, did not interfere with emotion recognition performance when dynamic visual cues in a talker’s expression are provided as participants scored at ceiling levels across all spectral band conditions. Our use of familiar sentences that contained congruent semantic and prosodic information have high ecological validity, which likely optimized listener performance under simulated CI hearing and may better predict CI users’ outcomes in everyday listening contexts.

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“…Most studies investigating voice perception in CI users found general deficitssometimes with substantial individual differences -in the ability to perceive voice gender (e.g., Fu, Chinchilla, & Galvin, 2004;Fu, Chinchilla, Nogaki, & Galvin, 2005;Fuller et al, 2014;Gaudrain & Baskent, 2018;Hazrati, Ali, Hansen, & Tobey, 2015;Kovacic & Balaban, 2009Li & Fu, 2011;Massida et al, 2013;Meister, Fursen, Streicher, Lang-Roth, & Walger, 2016;Meister, Landwehr, Pyschny, Walger, & von Wedel, 2009) or emotion (e.g., Agrawal et al, 2013;Jiam, Caldwell, Deroche, Chatterjee, & Limb, 2017;Kim & Yoon, 2018;Paquette et al, 2018;Schorr et al, 2009;Tinnemore, Zion, Kulkarni, & Chatterjee, 2018;Waaramaa, Kukkonen, Mykkanen, & Geneid, 2018). Few studies reported impairments in other aspects of voice perception, such as speaker familiarity or identity (e.g., Gonzalez & Oliver, 2005;Muhler, Ziese, & Verhey, 2017;Vongphoe & Zeng, 2005).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Parameter-specific Morphing Reveals Contributions of Timbre and F0 Cues to the Perception of Voice Gender and Age in Cochlear Implant Users

Skuk¹,

Kirchen²,

Oberhoffner³

et al. 2019

Preprint

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Purpose: Using naturalistic synthesized speech, we determined the relative importance of acoustic cues in voice gender and, for the first time, vocal age perception in Cochlear Implant (CI) users.Method: We investigated 28 CI users’ abilities to utilize fundamental frequency (F0) and timbre in perceiving voice gender (Experiment 1) and additional timing cues in perceiving vocal age (Experiment 2). TANDEM-STRAIGHT-based parameter-specific voice morphing was used to control acoustics in voice stimuli. Individual differences in CI users’ performance were captured by quantifying deviations from a control group of 19 normal hearing (NH) listeners. Results: CI users’ gender perception seemed exclusively based on F0, whereas the NH listeners efficiently used timbre. For age perception, timbre was more informative than F0 for both groups, with minor contributions of temporal cues. While a few CI users performed comparable to NH listeners overall, others were at chance. Separate analyses confirmed that even in high performing CI users, gender perception was almost exclusively based on F0. While high performers could discriminate age in male and female voices, low performers were close to chance overall, but used F0 as misleading cue to age (classifying female voices as young and male voices as old). Satisfaction with CI generally correlated with performance.Conclusions: We confirmed that CI user gender classification bases mainly on F0, but high performers could make reasonable usage of TIMBRE cues in both gender and age perception. Overall, parameter-specific morphing is a promising approach to objectively assess individual profiles of CI users abilities to perceive nonverbal social-communicative vocal signals.

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Children’s Recognition of Emotional Prosody in Spectrally Degraded Speech Is Predicted by Their Age and Cognitive Status

Cited by 27 publications

References 36 publications

High- and Low-Performing Adult Cochlear Implant Users on High-Variability Sentence Recognition: Differences in Auditory Spectral Resolution and Neurocognitive Functioning

High- and Low-Performing Adult Cochlear Implant Users on High-Variability Sentence Recognition: Differences in Auditory Spectral Resolution and Neurocognitive Functioning

Multimodal and Spectral Degradation Effects on Speech and Emotion Recognition in Adult Listeners

Parameter-specific Morphing Reveals Contributions of Timbre and F0 Cues to the Perception of Voice Gender and Age in Cochlear Implant Users

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