Perceptual adaptation of voice gender discrimination with spectrally shifted vowels

Voice gender discrimination provides a measure of more than pitch-related perception in cochlear implant users

OBJECTIVES

(1) To investigate whether voice gender discrimination (VGD) could be a useful indicator of the spectral and temporal processing abilities of individual cochlear implant (CI) users; (2) To examine the relationship between VGD and speech recognition with CI when comparable acoustic cues are used for both perception processes.

DESIGN

VGD was measured using two talker sets with different inter-gender fundamental frequencies (F(0)), as well as different acoustic CI simulations. Vowel and consonant recognition in quiet and noise were also measured and compared with VGD performance.

STUDY SAMPLE

Eleven postlingually deaf CI users.

RESULTS

The results showed that (1) mean VGD performance differed for different stimulus sets, (2) VGD and speech recognition performance varied among individual CI users, and (3) individual VGD performance was significantly correlated with speech recognition performance under certain conditions.

CONCLUSIONS

VGD measured with selected stimulus sets might be useful for assessing not only pitch-related perception, but also spectral and temporal processing by individual CI users. In addition to improvements in spectral resolution and modulation detection, the improvement in higher modulation frequency discrimination might be particularly important for CI users in noisy environments.