Children weight dynamic spectral structure more than adults: Evidence from equivalent signals

Lowenstein, Joanna H.; Nittrouer, Susan; Tarr, Eric

doi:10.1121/1.4763554

Cited by 12 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 9 publications

(14 reference statements)

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“…This developmental effect in NH children with vocoded speech suggests that without prior experience, the auditory and language systems of the brain need to be more fully developed to process emotion in spectrally degraded speech. Similar findings have been reported by other investigators in the realm of speech recognition (Eisenberg et al, 2001 ; Nittrouer et al, 2009 ; Lowenstein et al, 2012 ).…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Deficits in the Sensitivity to Pitch Sweeps by School-Aged Children Wearing Cochlear Implants

et al. 2016

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Sensitivity to static changes in pitch has been shown to be poorer in school-aged children wearing cochlear implants (CIs) than children with normal hearing (NH), but it is unclear whether this is also the case for dynamic changes in pitch. Yet, dynamically changing pitch has considerable ecological relevance in terms of natural speech, particularly aspects such as intonation, emotion, or lexical tone information. Twenty one children with NH and 23 children wearing a CI participated in this study, along with 18 NH adults and 6 CI adults for comparison. Listeners with CIs used their clinically assigned settings with envelope-based coding strategies. Percent correct was measured in one- or three-interval two-alternative forced choice tasks, for the direction or discrimination of harmonic complexes based on a linearly rising or falling fundamental frequency. Sweep rates were adjusted per subject, in a logarithmic scale, so as to cover the full extent of the psychometric function. Data for up- and down-sweeps were fitted separately, using a maximum-likelihood technique. Fits were similar for up- and down-sweeps in the discrimination task, but diverged in the direction task because psychometric functions for down-sweeps were very shallow. Hits and false alarms were then converted into d′ and beta values, from which a threshold was extracted at a d′ of 0.77. Thresholds were very consistent between the two tasks and considerably higher (worse) for CI listeners than for their NH peers. Thresholds were also higher for children than adults. Factors such as age at implantation, age at profound hearing loss, and duration of CI experience did not play any major role in this sensitivity. Thresholds of dynamic pitch sensitivity (in either task) also correlated with thresholds for static pitch sensitivity and with performance in tasks related to speech prosody.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Deficits in the Sensitivity to Pitch Sweeps by School-Aged Children Wearing Cochlear Implants

et al. 2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This developmental effect in NH children with vocoded speech suggests that without prior experience, the auditory and language systems of the brain need to be more fully developed to process emotion in spectrally degraded speech. Similar findings have been reported by other investigators in the realm of speech recognition (Eisenberg et al, 2001;Nittrouer et al, 2009;Lowenstein et al, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 80%

Deficits in the sensitivity to pitch sweeps by school-aged children wearing cochlear implants

Deroche

Kulkarni

Christensen

et al. 2016

Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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Sensitivity to static changes in pitch has been shown to be poorer in school-aged children wearing cochlear implants (CIs) than children with normal hearing (NH), but it is unclear whether this is also the case for dynamic changes in pitch. Yet, dynamically changing pitch has considerable ecological relevance in terms of natural speech, particularly aspects such as intonation, emotion, or lexical tone information. Twenty one children with NH and 23 children wearing a CI participated in this study, along with 18 NH adults and 6 CI adults for comparison. Listeners with CIs used their clinically assigned settings with envelope-based coding strategies. Percent correct was measured in one-or three-interval two-alternative forced choice tasks, for the direction or discrimination of harmonic complexes based on a linearly rising or falling fundamental frequency. Sweep rates were adjusted per subject, in a logarithmic scale, so as to cover the full extent of the psychometric function. Data for up-and down-sweeps were fitted separately, using a maximum-likelihood technique. Fits were similar for up-and down-sweeps in the discrimination task, but diverged in the direction task because psychometric functions for down-sweeps were very shallow. Hits and false alarms were then converted into d ′ and beta values, from which a threshold was extracted at a d ′ of 0.77. Thresholds were very consistent between the two tasks and considerably higher (worse) for CI listeners than for their NH peers. Thresholds were also higher for children than adults. Factors such as age at implantation, age at profound hearing loss, and duration of CI experience did not play any major role in this sensitivity. Thresholds of dynamic pitch sensitivity (in either task) also correlated with thresholds for static pitch sensitivity and with performance in tasks related to speech prosody.

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“…Figure 4(b) illustrates that children with particularly poor frequency resolution are still able to perceive speech in noise as well as better-performing adult CI users. If this observation is confirmed in a larger sample size, it would be particularly interesting given the fact that NH children are more dependent than adults on spectral cues (particularly dynamic spectral cues) for speech perception and spoken-language development (Lowenstein et al, 2012;Moberly et al, 2016a). It is possible that pre-lingually deaf CI users' experience with reduced spectral resolution during development leads to modified listening strategies or enhanced attentional capacities for speech perception in noise.…”

Section: B Across-channel Intensity Resolution and Srdmentioning

confidence: 93%

Effects of age and hearing mechanism on spectral resolution in normal hearing and cochlear-implanted listeners

Horn

Dudley

Dedhia

et al. 2017

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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Spectral resolution limits speech perception with a cochlear implant (CI) in post-lingually deaf adults. However, the development of spectral resolution in pre-lingually deaf implanted children is not well understood. Acoustic spectral resolution was measured as a function of age (school-age versus adult) in CI and normal-hearing (NH) participants using spectral ripple discrimination (SRD). A 3-alternative forced-choice task was used to obtain SRD thresholds at five ripple depths. Effects of age and hearing method on SRD and spectral modulation transfer function (SMTF) slope (reflecting frequency resolution) and x-intercept (reflecting across-channel intensity resolution) were examined. Correlations between SRD, SMTF parameters, age, and speech perception in noise were studied. Better SRD in NH than CI participants was observed at all depths. SRD thresholds and SMTF slope correlated with speech perception in CI users. When adjusted for floor performance, x-intercept did not correlate with SMTF slope or speech perception. Age and x-intercept correlations were positive and significant in NH but not CI children suggesting that across-channel intensity resolution matures during school-age in NH children. No evidence for maturation of spectral resolution beyond early school-age in pre-lingually deaf implanted CI users was found in the present study.

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Children weight dynamic spectral structure more than adults: Evidence from equivalent signals

Cited by 12 publications

References 9 publications

Deficits in the Sensitivity to Pitch Sweeps by School-Aged Children Wearing Cochlear Implants

Deficits in the Sensitivity to Pitch Sweeps by School-Aged Children Wearing Cochlear Implants

Deficits in the sensitivity to pitch sweeps by school-aged children wearing cochlear implants

Effects of age and hearing mechanism on spectral resolution in normal hearing and cochlear-implanted listeners

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