Voice Discrimination by Adults with Cochlear Implants: the Benefits of Early Implantation for Vocal-Tract Length Perception

Zaltz, Yael; Goldsworthy, Raymond L.; Kishon‐Rabin, Liat; Eisenberg, Laurie S.

doi:10.1007/s10162-017-0653-5

Cited by 29 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 86 publications

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“…There is some evidence that CI users can use combined F0-VTL cues in sentence contexts (Meister et al, 2016), but it is clear from the limitations of CI processing that it is easier for CI users to access F0 information. Age at implantation was related to use of VTL cues, but not F0 (Zaltz et al, 2018). Those who were implanted earlier had improved VTL discrimination, suggesting early exposure is important for taking advantage of VTL cues for talker discrimination.…”

Section: Role Of Different Acoustic Cuesmentioning

confidence: 89%

“…Other studies found significant differences between groups in the manner by which listeners encoded vocal properties (see Section 3.5; Barone et al, 2016;Kovačić & Balaban, 2009;Meister et al, 2016;Zaltz et al, 2018). Another study examined whether topdown information, such as visual information, would influence listeners' gender rating of voices (Barone et al, 2016).…”

Section: Comparison To Individuals With Typical Hearingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Another hypothesis is that children who receive their CIs earlier may have improved voice perception, especially if there is a sensitive period for voice perception. Indeed, some studies found that children who were implanted at a younger age have better talker discrimination (Geers et al, 2013;Zaltz et al, 2018) and gender identification skills (Kovačić & Balaban, 2010). One study only found weak effects, albeit in the expected direction (Cleary et al, 2005).…”

Section: Relationship To Hearing Experiencementioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Recognizing voices through a cochlear implant: A systematic review

Orena¹,

Sem²

2021

Preprint

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Objective: Some cochlear implant (CI) users report having difficulty accessing indexical information in the speech signal, presumably due to the transformation from acoustic to electric signal in CI devices. The purpose of this paper was to systematically review and evaluate the existing research on talker perception in CI users. Specifically, we reviewed the performance of CI users in talker discrimination, gender identification, and talker recognition tasks in relation to performance by normal-hearing (NH) listeners. We also examined the different factors (such asparticipant, hearing and device characteristics) that might influence talker perception.Design: We completed a systematic search of the literature with select keywords using citation aggregation software to search Google Scholar. We included primary reports that had at least one group of participants with cochlear implants, and had an experimental task that measured talker or voice perception. Each included study was also evaluated for quality of evidence.Results: The initial search resulted in 1239 references, which were first screened for inclusion and then evaluated in full. Thirty-nine studies examining talker identification, talker discrimimnation, and gender discrimination were included in the final review. The majority of studies were focused on adult postlingual cochlear implant users, with a few studies focused on prelingual implant users. As a group, CI users generally performed above chance in talker perception tasks, but performed worse than NH controls. Nonetheless, a subset of CI users reached the same level of performance as NH participants. CI users relied more heavily on fundamental frequency over vocal tract length cues to distinguish talkers compared to NH listeners. Within groups of CI users, there is moderate evidence for a bimodal benefit for talker perception, and there are mixed findings about the effects of hearing experience. Performance in talker discrimination tasks was related to other linguistic tasks, including word recognition. Conclusion: The current review highlights the challenges faced by CI users in tracking and recognizing voices and how they adapt to it. There is clear evidence that CI users can process indexical information, albeit differently and more effortfully than NH listeners. Recent work has begun to describe some of the factors that might ease the challenges of talker perception in CI users, but further high-quality research is needed to disentangle some of the mixed findings. We conclude by suggesting some future avenues of research to optimize real-world speech outcomes.

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Section: Role Of Different Acoustic Cuesmentioning

confidence: 89%

Section: Comparison To Individuals With Typical Hearingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Relationship To Hearing Experiencementioning

confidence: 99%

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Recognizing voices through a cochlear implant: A systematic review

Orena¹,

Sem²

2021

Preprint

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“…One aspect of vocal timbre concerns the perception of cues in the acoustic signal that are related to VTL. Recent research has shown that CI users exhibit deficits in their ability to extract VTL cues, which could be a factor contributing to poor speaker and gender identification (Kovačić and Balaban, 2009;Massida et al, 2013;Fuller et al, 2014;Gaudrain and Başkent, 2015;Gaudrain and Baskent, 2018;Zaltz et al, 2018) and could contribute to difficulties in singing voice timbre perception as well.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multidimensional Timbre Spaces of Cochlear Implant Vocoded and Non-vocoded Synthetic Female Singing Voices

et al. 2020

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Many post-lingually deafened cochlear implant (CI) users report that they no longer enjoy listening to music, which could possibly contribute to a perceived reduction in quality of life. One aspect of music perception, vocal timbre perception, may be difficult for CI users because they may not be able to use the same timbral cues available to normal hearing listeners. Vocal tract resonance frequencies have been shown to provide perceptual cues to voice categories such as baritone, tenor, mezzo-soprano, and soprano, while changes in glottal source spectral slope are believed to be related to perception of vocal quality dimensions such as fluty vs. brassy. As a first step toward understanding vocal timbre perception in CI users, we employed an 8-channel noiseband vocoder to test how vocoding can alter the timbral perception of female synthetic sung vowels across pitches. Non-vocoded and vocoded stimuli were synthesized with vibrato using 3 excitation source spectral slopes and 3 vocal tract transfer functions (mezzo-soprano, intermediate, soprano) at the pitches C4, B4, and F5. Six multidimensional scaling experiments were conducted: C4 not vocoded, C4 vocoded, B4 not vocoded, B4 vocoded, F5 not vocoded, and F5 vocoded. At the pitch C4, for both non-vocoded and vocoded conditions, dimension 1 grouped stimuli according to voice category and was most strongly predicted by spectral centroid from 0 to 2 kHz. While dimension 2 grouped stimuli according to excitation source spectral slope, it was organized slightly differently and predicted by different acoustic parameters in the nonvocoded and vocoded conditions. For pitches B4 and F5 spectral centroid from 0 to 2 kHz most strongly predicted dimension 1. However, while dimension 1 separated all 3 voice categories in the vocoded condition, dimension 1 only separated the soprano stimuli from the intermediate and mezzo-soprano stimuli in the non-vocoded condition. While it is unclear how these results predict timbre perception in CI listeners, in general, these results suggest that perhaps some aspects of vocal timbre may remain.

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“…Various tests for music perception have been proposed to investigate CI users’ abilities to use the information provided by electric hearing. These tests include the assessment of listeners’ capacities in the discrimination of pitch changes and pitch direction, the identification of melodies and timbres, as well as the processing of rhythms and emotions (e.g., Cooper et al, 2008; Looi et al, 2008; Nimmons et al, 2008; Kang et al, 2009; Brockmeier et al, 2010; Gaudrain and Başkent, 2018; Zaltz et al, 2018). While rhythmic processing is close to normal, CI listeners have been shown to be impaired in tasks requiring pitch discrimination or pitch direction judgments, even though inter-subject variability can be large (for reviews, see McDermott, 2004; Moore and Carlyon, 2005; Drennan and Rubinstein, 2008).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Implicit Processing of Pitch in Postlingually Deafened Cochlear Implant Users

et al. 2019

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Cochlear implant (CI) users can only access limited pitch information through their device, which hinders music appreciation. Poor music perception may not only be due to CI technical limitations; lack of training or negative attitudes toward the electric sound might also contribute to it. Our study investigated with an implicit (indirect) investigation method whether poorly transmitted pitch information, presented as musical chords, can activate listeners’ knowledge about musical structures acquired prior to deafness. Seven postlingually deafened adult CI users participated in a musical priming paradigm investigating pitch processing without explicit judgments. Sequences made of eight sung-chords that ended on either a musically related (expected) target chord or a less-related (less-expected) target chord were presented. The use of a priming task based on linguistic features allowed CI patients to perform fast judgments on target chords in the sung music. If listeners’ musical knowledge is activated and allows for tonal expectations (as in normal-hearing listeners), faster response times were expected for related targets than less-related targets. However, if the pitch percept is too different and does not activate musical knowledge acquired prior to deafness, storing pitch information in a short-term memory buffer predicts the opposite pattern. If transmitted pitch information is too poor, no difference in response times should be observed. Results showed that CI patients were able to perform the linguistic task on the sung chords, but correct response times indicated sensory priming, with faster response times observed for the less-related targets: CI patients processed at least some of the pitch information of the musical sequences, which was stored in an auditory short-term memory and influenced chord processing. This finding suggests that the signal transmitted via electric hearing led to a pitch percept that was too different from that based on acoustic hearing, so that it did not automatically activate listeners’ previously acquired musical structure knowledge. However, the transmitted signal seems sufficiently informative to lead to sensory priming. These findings are encouraging for the development of pitch-related training programs for CI patients, despite the current technological limitations of the CI coding.

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Voice Discrimination by Adults with Cochlear Implants: the Benefits of Early Implantation for Vocal-Tract Length Perception

Cited by 29 publications

References 86 publications

Recognizing voices through a cochlear implant: A systematic review

Recognizing voices through a cochlear implant: A systematic review

Multidimensional Timbre Spaces of Cochlear Implant Vocoded and Non-vocoded Synthetic Female Singing Voices

Implicit Processing of Pitch in Postlingually Deafened Cochlear Implant Users

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