Prosody perception and musical pitch discrimination in adults using cochlear implants

Abstract

Cochlear implants (CIs) provide coarse representations of pitch, which are adequate for speech but not for music. Despite increasing interest in music processing by CI users, the available information is fragmentary. The present experiment attempted to fill this void by conducting a comprehensive assessment of music processing in adult CI users. CI users (n =6) and normally hearing (NH) controls (n = 12) were tested on several tasks involving melody and rhythm perception, recognition of familiar music, and emotion of recognition in speech and music. CI performance was substantially poorer than NH performance and at chance levels on pitch processing tasks. Performance was highly variable, however, with one individual achieving NH performance levels on some tasks, probably because of low-frequency residual hearing in his unimplanted ear. Future research with a larger sample of CI users can shed light on factors associated with good and poor music processing in this population.iii

Voice emotion perception and production in cochlear implant users

“…Our review discusses how voice emotion processing, perception, and production may be hindered in CI users, and that the wide variability in CI performance is secondary to a number of factors including poor pitch representation and limited spectro436 temporal fine structure information. As a result, CI users may be forced to rely on cues other than frequency - such as intensity, tempo, and duration - to determine the intended emotion of a speaker (Kalathottukaren, et al, 2015). Other studies have shown that CI users are not particularly effective at using alternative strategies, and continue to rely most heavily on pitch information despite its poor quality for prosodic information (Meister et al, 2009).…”

“…Adult and pediatric CI users consistently demonstrate significant deficits in target emotion recognition ((Luo, et al, 2007; Pereira, 2000; Kalathottukaren, et al, 2015; Hopyan-Misakyan, et al, 2009; Chatterjee, et al, 2015; Nakata, et al, 2012; Volkova, et al, 2012; Gilbers, et al, 2015) and other prosodic-dependent components of communication (e.g. question-statement discrimination, lexical tone languages, stress patterns in speech).…”

“…In other words, they rely heavily on pitch information despite its poor quality. Kalathottukaren et al (2015) also found impaired stress identification ability in CI users using the Profiling Elements of Prosody in Speech-Communication (PEPS-C) test, a battery of four prosody tests measuring perception of contour, affect, stress, and “chunking”, referring to utilization of prosodic cues to communicate intonational subsections of a phrase (for example, “fruit salad” as a compound word versus “fruit, salad” as a list). CI users performed more poorly than NH listeners in the prosodic subtests dependent on pitch representation (the contour, affect, and stress tests) but near normal on the “chunking” test, which relies more heavily on temporal cues.…”

“…CI users performed more poorly than NH listeners in the prosodic subtests dependent on pitch representation (the contour, affect, and stress tests) but near normal on the “chunking” test, which relies more heavily on temporal cues. This is another manifestation of poor pitch perception in CI recipients but also suggests that they are able to utilize durational and timing cues as one means of extracting prosodic information (Figure 2, Kalathottukaren, et al, 2015). …”

“…Percent correct scores for CI users (left) and NH listeners (right) on four subtests of PEPS-C, including turn-end, affect, chunking, and contrastive stress (Kalathottukaren, et al, 2015). As indicated by the asterisk, chunking was the only task for which CI users did not perform significantly worse than NH listeners.…”