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Description
Cochlear implant (CI) successfully restores hearing sensation to profoundly deaf patients, but its
performance is limited by poor spectral resolution. Acoustic CI simulation has been widely used
in normal-­hearing (NH) listeners to study the effect of spectral resolution on speech perception,
while avoiding patient-­related confounds. It is unclear how speech production may change

Cochlear implant (CI) successfully restores hearing sensation to profoundly deaf patients, but its
performance is limited by poor spectral resolution. Acoustic CI simulation has been widely used
in normal-­hearing (NH) listeners to study the effect of spectral resolution on speech perception,
while avoiding patient-­related confounds. It is unclear how speech production may change with
the degree of spectral degradation of auditory feedback as experience by CI users. In this study,
a real-­time sinewave CI simulation was developed to provide NH subjects with auditory
feedback of different spectral resolution (1, 2, 4, and 8 channels). NH subjects were asked to
produce and identify vowels, as well as recognize sentences while listening to the real-­time CI
simulation. The results showed that sentence recognition scores with the real-­time CI simulation
improved with more channels, similar to those with the traditional off-­line CI simulation.
Perception of a vowel continuum “HEAD”-­ “HAD” was near chance with 1, 2, and 4 channels,
and greatly improved with 8 channels and full spectrum. The spectral resolution of auditory
feedback did not significantly affect any acoustic feature of vowel production (e.g., vowel space
area, mean amplitude, mean and variability of fundamental and formant frequencies). There
was no correlation between vowel production and perception. The lack of effect of auditory
feedback spectral resolution on vowel production was likely due to the limited exposure of NH
subjects to CI simulation and the limited frequency ranges covered by the sinewave carriers of
CI simulation. Future studies should investigate the effects of various CI processing parameters
on speech production using a noise-­band CI simulation.
ContributorsPerez Lustre, Sarahi (Author) / Luo, Xin (Thesis director) / Daliri, Ayoub (Committee member) / Division of Teacher Preparation (Contributor) / College of Health Solutions (Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
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Description
Prosodic features such as fundamental frequency (F0), intensity, and duration convey important information of speech intonation (i.e., is it a statement or a question?). Because cochlear implants (CIs) do not adequately encode pitch-related F0 cues, pre-lignually deaf pediatric CI users have poorer speech intonation perception and production than normal-hearing (NH)

Prosodic features such as fundamental frequency (F0), intensity, and duration convey important information of speech intonation (i.e., is it a statement or a question?). Because cochlear implants (CIs) do not adequately encode pitch-related F0 cues, pre-lignually deaf pediatric CI users have poorer speech intonation perception and production than normal-hearing (NH) children. In contrast, post-lingually deaf adult CI users have developed speech production skills via normal hearing before deafness and implantation. Further, combined electric hearing (via CI) and acoustic hearing (via hearing aid, HA) may improve CI users’ perception of pitch cues in speech intonation. Therefore, this study tested (1) whether post-lingually deaf adult CI users have similar speech intonation production to NH adults and (2) whether their speech intonation production improves with auditory feedback via CI+HA (i.e., bimodal hearing). Eight post-lingually deaf adult bimodal CI users and nine NH adults participated in this study. 10 question-and-answer dialogues with an experimenter were used to elicit 10 pairs of syntactically matched questions and statements from each participant. Bimodal CI users were tested under four hearing conditions: no-device (ND), HA, CI, and CI+HA. F0 change, intensity change, and duration ratio between the last two syllables of each utterance were analyzed to evaluate the quality of speech intonation production. The results showed no significant differences between CI and NH participants in any of the acoustic features of questions and statements. For CI participants, the CI+HA condition led to significantly greater F0 decreases of statements than the ND condition, while the ND condition led to significantly greater duration ratios of questions and statements. These results suggest that bimodal CI users change the use of prosodic cues for speech intonation production in different hearing conditions and access to auditory feedback via CI+HA may improve their voice pitch control to produce more salient statement intonation contours.
ContributorsAi, Chang (Author) / Luo, Xin (Thesis advisor) / Daliri, Ayoub (Committee member) / Davidson, Lisa (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
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Description
Music is an important part of everyday life. It plays a crucial role for human connection and provides a communication network for emotions. Hearing loss can negatively impact the music experience. Although Cochlear Implants (CI) enable individuals with severe to profound hearing loss to successfully understand spoken language, many users

Music is an important part of everyday life. It plays a crucial role for human connection and provides a communication network for emotions. Hearing loss can negatively impact the music experience. Although Cochlear Implants (CI) enable individuals with severe to profound hearing loss to successfully understand spoken language, many users find their experience with music less than satisfactory. Music training programs may offer a hopeful solution to recondition the music experience for CI users. However, music training programs available to CI users today generally carry more weight on improving the perceptual accuracy of music rather than enhancing appreciation and enjoyment. The primary objective of this review is to identify different types of music training programs and their connection to music appreciation. A brief overview of the factors that contribute to music appreciation are also provided.
ContributorsGellhaus, Jacynda (Author) / Luo, Xin (Thesis advisor) / Rao, Aparna (Committee member) / Berisha, Visar (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021