Comparison of Music Perception in Bilateral and Unilateral Cochlear Implant Users and Normal-Hearing Subjects

Abstract

Music plays an important role in the daily life of cochlear implant (CI) users, but electrical hearing and speech processing pose challenges for enjoying music. Studies of unilateral CI (UCI) users’ music perception have found that these subjects have little difficulty recognizing tempo and rhythm but great difficulty with pitch, interval and melody. The present study is an initial step towards understanding music perception in bilateral CI (BCI) users. The Munich Music Questionnaire was used to investigate music listening habits and enjoyment in 23 BCI users compared to 2 control groups: 23 UCI users and 23 normal-hearing (NH) listeners. Bilateral users appeared to have a number of advantages over unilateral users, though their enjoyment of music did not reach the level of NH listeners.

Munich Music Questionnaire: adaptation into Brazilian Portuguese and application in cochlear implant users

“…Similar answers were scored in the study that used MUMU to assess music appreciation among unilateral and bilateral CI users (15) . The answers obtained regarding the preferred type of music showed the influence of Brazilian culture.…”

“…The questions chosen for the analysis of responses in this group were based on the suggestions from the authors of MUMU because it is a long questionnaire composed of 25 questions (9,15) . In further studies, the Questionário de Música de Munique will enable the comparison and the correlation between objective and subjective measures related to music among CI users.…”

“…The Questionário de Música de Munique was sent to three other translators, whose language and cultural condition was similar to that of the former. These translators were not familiar with the original text Music questionnaire for implant users CoDAS 2015;27(1): [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20] and did a new version in English. These new translators were not allowed to see the original text, written in English, to prevent any influence on the translation.…”

A Music-Related Quality of Life Measure to Guide Music Rehabilitation for Adult Cochlear Implant Users

“…Aspects of the relationship of CI users with music that are relevant to the QoL, such as feelings about music or music-related social interaction, are also poorly covered in previous questionnaires, which limits the range of music-related benefits of music rehabilitation they can detect. None of these questionnaires uses a uniform response scale, which makes them difficult to score; the response options of the MUMU and the IMBQ have had to be adapted (to a 5-point Likert scale for the MUMU and a 3-point scale, positive, neutral and negative for the IMBQ) to facilitate statistical analysis of responses (Veekmans et al, 2009;Drennan et al, 2014). Finally, although the content and face validity of the IMBQ, the MUMU and the UCMLQ have been assessed, there is no published evidence for their psychometric properties, reliability or construct validity, which are required for a questionnaire to be a strong measure.…”

Prosody perception and musical pitch discrimination in adults using cochlear implants

“…It comes as no surprise, then, that postlingually deafened adult CI users, who had access to rich auditory representations of music before their hearing loss, are often disappointed with music heard via their implant (Gfeller, Christ, Knutson, Witt, Murray & Tyler, 2000;Lassaletta et al, 2007;Looi & She, 2010;Veekmans, Ressel, Mueller, Vischer & Brockmeier, 2009). This is unfortunate because music is an important source of pleasure for many, if not most, hearing individuals (Laukka, 2006).…”