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Nagels L, Gaudrain E, Vickers D, Hendriks P, Başkent D. Prelingually Deaf Children With Cochlear Implants Show Better Perception of Voice Cues and Speech in Competing Speech Than Postlingually Deaf Adults With Cochlear Implants. Ear Hear 2024; 45:952-968. [PMID: 38616318 PMCID: PMC11175806 DOI: 10.1097/aud.0000000000001489] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/29/2022] [Accepted: 01/10/2024] [Indexed: 04/16/2024]
Abstract
OBJECTIVES Postlingually deaf adults with cochlear implants (CIs) have difficulties with perceiving differences in speakers' voice characteristics and benefit little from voice differences for the perception of speech in competing speech. However, not much is known yet about the perception and use of voice characteristics in prelingually deaf implanted children with CIs. Unlike CI adults, most CI children became deaf during the acquisition of language. Extensive neuroplastic changes during childhood could make CI children better at using the available acoustic cues than CI adults, or the lack of exposure to a normal acoustic speech signal could make it more difficult for them to learn which acoustic cues they should attend to. This study aimed to examine to what degree CI children can perceive voice cues and benefit from voice differences for perceiving speech in competing speech, comparing their abilities to those of normal-hearing (NH) children and CI adults. DESIGN CI children's voice cue discrimination (experiment 1), voice gender categorization (experiment 2), and benefit from target-masker voice differences for perceiving speech in competing speech (experiment 3) were examined in three experiments. The main focus was on the perception of mean fundamental frequency (F0) and vocal-tract length (VTL), the primary acoustic cues related to speakers' anatomy and perceived voice characteristics, such as voice gender. RESULTS CI children's F0 and VTL discrimination thresholds indicated lower sensitivity to differences compared with their NH-age-equivalent peers, but their mean discrimination thresholds of 5.92 semitones (st) for F0 and 4.10 st for VTL indicated higher sensitivity than postlingually deaf CI adults with mean thresholds of 9.19 st for F0 and 7.19 st for VTL. Furthermore, CI children's perceptual weighting of F0 and VTL cues for voice gender categorization closely resembled that of their NH-age-equivalent peers, in contrast with CI adults. Finally, CI children had more difficulties in perceiving speech in competing speech than their NH-age-equivalent peers, but they performed better than CI adults. Unlike CI adults, CI children showed a benefit from target-masker voice differences in F0 and VTL, similar to NH children. CONCLUSION Although CI children's F0 and VTL voice discrimination scores were overall lower than those of NH children, their weighting of F0 and VTL cues for voice gender categorization and their benefit from target-masker differences in F0 and VTL resembled that of NH children. Together, these results suggest that prelingually deaf implanted CI children can effectively utilize spectrotemporally degraded F0 and VTL cues for voice and speech perception, generally outperforming postlingually deaf CI adults in comparable tasks. These findings underscore the presence of F0 and VTL cues in the CI signal to a certain degree and suggest other factors contributing to the perception challenges faced by CI adults.
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Affiliation(s)
- Leanne Nagels
- Center for Language and Cognition Groningen (CLCG), University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
- Department of Otorhinolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery, University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
- Research School of Behavioural and Cognitive Neurosciences, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
| | - Etienne Gaudrain
- Department of Otorhinolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery, University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
- Research School of Behavioural and Cognitive Neurosciences, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
- CNRS UMR 5292, Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, Auditory Cognition and Psychoacoustics, Inserm UMRS 1028, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, Université de Lyon, Lyon, France
| | - Deborah Vickers
- Cambridge Hearing Group, Sound Lab, Clinical Neurosciences Department, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
| | - Petra Hendriks
- Center for Language and Cognition Groningen (CLCG), University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
- Research School of Behavioural and Cognitive Neurosciences, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
| | - Deniz Başkent
- Department of Otorhinolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery, University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
- Research School of Behavioural and Cognitive Neurosciences, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
- W.J. Kolff Institute for Biomedical Engineering and Materials Science, University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
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Babaoğlu G, Rachman L, Ertürk P, Özkişi Yazgan B, Sennaroğlu G, Gaudrain E, Başkent D. Perception of voice cues in school-age children with hearing aids. THE JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA 2024; 155:722-741. [PMID: 38284822 DOI: 10.1121/10.0024356] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/13/2023] [Accepted: 12/26/2023] [Indexed: 01/30/2024]
Abstract
The just-noticeable differences (JNDs) of the voice cues of voice pitch (F0) and vocal-tract length (VTL) were measured in school-aged children with bilateral hearing aids and children and adults with normal hearing. The JNDs were larger for hearing-aided than normal-hearing children up to the age of 12 for F0 and into adulthood for all ages for VTL. Age was a significant factor for both groups for F0 JNDs, but only for the hearing-aided group for VTL JNDs. Age of maturation was later for F0 than VTL. Individual JNDs of the two groups largely overlapped for F0, but little for VTL. Hearing thresholds (unaided or aided, 500-400 Hz, overlapping with mid-range speech frequencies) did not correlate with the JNDs. However, extended low-frequency hearing thresholds (unaided, 125-250 Hz, overlapping with voice F0 ranges) correlated with the F0 JNDs. Hence, age and hearing status differentially interact with F0 and VTL perception, and VTL perception seems challenging for hearing-aided children. On the other hand, even children with profound hearing loss could do the task, indicating a hearing aid benefit for voice perception. Given the significant age effect and that for F0 the hearing-aided children seem to be catching up with age-typical development, voice cue perception may continue developing in hearing-aided children.
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Affiliation(s)
- Gizem Babaoğlu
- Department of Otorhinolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery, University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
| | - Laura Rachman
- Department of Otorhinolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery, University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
| | - Pınar Ertürk
- Department of Audiology, Health Sciences Institute, Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey
| | - Başak Özkişi Yazgan
- Department of Audiology, Health Sciences Institute, Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey
| | - Gonca Sennaroğlu
- Department of Audiology, Health Sciences Institute, Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey
| | - Etienne Gaudrain
- Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, CNRS UMR5292, Inserm U1028, Université Lyon 1, Lyon, France
| | - Deniz Başkent
- Department of Otorhinolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery, University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
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Koelewijn T, Gaudrain E, Shehab T, Treczoks T, Başkent D. The Role of Word Content, Sentence Information, and Vocoding for Voice Cue Perception. JOURNAL OF SPEECH, LANGUAGE, AND HEARING RESEARCH : JSLHR 2023; 66:3665-3676. [PMID: 37556819 DOI: 10.1044/2023_jslhr-22-00491] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 08/11/2023]
Abstract
PURPOSE For voice perception, two voice cues, the fundamental frequency (fo) and/or vocal tract length (VTL), seem to largely contribute to identification of voices and speaker characteristics. Acoustic content related to these voice cues is altered in cochlear implant transmitted speech, rendering voice perception difficult for the implant user. In everyday listening, there could be some facilitation from top-down compensatory mechanisms such as from use of linguistic content. Recently, we have shown a lexical content benefit on just-noticeable differences (JNDs) in VTL perception, which was not affected by vocoding. Whether this observed benefit relates to lexicality or phonemic content and whether additional sentence information can affect voice cue perception as well were investigated in this study. METHOD This study examined lexical benefit on VTL perception, by comparing words, time-reversed words, and nonwords, to investigate the contribution of lexical (words vs. nonwords) or phonetic (nonwords vs. reversed words) information. In addition, we investigated the effect of amount of speech (auditory) information on fo and VTL voice cue perception, by comparing words to sentences. In both experiments, nonvocoded and vocoded auditory stimuli were presented. RESULTS The outcomes showed a replication of the detrimental effect reversed words have on VTL perception. Smaller JNDs were shown for stimuli containing lexical and/or phonemic information. Experiment 2 showed a benefit in processing full sentences compared to single words in both fo and VTL perception. In both experiments, there was an effect of vocoding, which only interacted with sentence information for fo. CONCLUSIONS In addition to previous findings suggesting a lexical benefit, the current results show, more specifically, that lexical and phonemic information improves VTL perception. fo and VTL perception benefits from more sentence information compared to words. These results indicate that cochlear implant users may be able to partially compensate for voice cue perception difficulties by relying on the linguistic content and rich acoustic cues of everyday speech. SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.23796405.
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Affiliation(s)
- Thomas Koelewijn
- Department of Otorhinolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery, University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, the Netherlands
- Research School of Behavioural and Cognitive Neurosciences, Graduate School of Medical Sciences, University of Groningen, the Netherlands
| | - Etienne Gaudrain
- Department of Otorhinolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery, University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, the Netherlands
- Research School of Behavioural and Cognitive Neurosciences, Graduate School of Medical Sciences, University of Groningen, the Netherlands
- Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, CNRS UMR5292, Inserm U1028, UCBL, UJM, Lyon, France
| | - Thawab Shehab
- Department of Otorhinolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery, University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, the Netherlands
- Neurolinguistics, Faculty of Arts, University of Groningen, the Netherlands
| | - Tobias Treczoks
- Department of Otorhinolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery, University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, the Netherlands
- Medical Physics and Cluster of Excellence "Hearing4all," Department of Medical Physics and Acoustics, Faculty VI Medicine and Health Sciences, Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Germany
| | - Deniz Başkent
- Department of Otorhinolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery, University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, the Netherlands
- Research School of Behavioural and Cognitive Neurosciences, Graduate School of Medical Sciences, University of Groningen, the Netherlands
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Holmes E, Johnsrude IS. Intelligibility benefit for familiar voices is not accompanied by better discrimination of fundamental frequency or vocal tract length. Hear Res 2023; 429:108704. [PMID: 36701896 DOI: 10.1016/j.heares.2023.108704] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/30/2022] [Revised: 11/11/2022] [Accepted: 01/19/2023] [Indexed: 01/21/2023]
Abstract
Speech is more intelligible when it is spoken by familiar than unfamiliar people. If this benefit arises because key voice characteristics like perceptual correlates of fundamental frequency or vocal tract length (VTL) are more accurately represented for familiar voices, listeners may be able to discriminate smaller manipulations to such characteristics for familiar than unfamiliar voices. We measured participants' (N = 17) thresholds for discriminating pitch (correlate of fundamental frequency, or glottal pulse rate) and formant spacing (correlate of VTL; 'VTL-timbre') for voices that were familiar (participants' friends) and unfamiliar (other participants' friends). As expected, familiar voices were more intelligible. However, discrimination thresholds were no smaller for the same familiar voices. The size of the intelligibility benefit for a familiar over an unfamiliar voice did not relate to the difference in discrimination thresholds for the same voices. Also, the familiar-voice intelligibility benefit was just as large following perceptible manipulations to pitch and VTL-timbre. These results are more consistent with cognitive accounts of speech perception than traditional accounts that predict better discrimination.
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Affiliation(s)
- Emma Holmes
- Department of Speech Hearing and Phonetic Sciences, UCL, London WC1N 1PF, UK; Brain and Mind Institute, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario N6A 3K7, Canada.
| | - Ingrid S Johnsrude
- Brain and Mind Institute, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario N6A 3K7, Canada; School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario N6G 1H1, Canada
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Effects of number of maxima and electrical dynamic range on speech-in-noise perception with an “n-of-m” cochlear-implant strategy. Biomed Signal Process Control 2023. [DOI: 10.1016/j.bspc.2022.104169] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/21/2022]
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Colby S, Orena AJ. Recognizing Voices Through a Cochlear Implant: A Systematic Review of Voice Perception, Talker Discrimination, and Talker Identification. JOURNAL OF SPEECH, LANGUAGE, AND HEARING RESEARCH : JSLHR 2022; 65:3165-3194. [PMID: 35926089 PMCID: PMC9911123 DOI: 10.1044/2022_jslhr-21-00209] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/12/2021] [Revised: 02/02/2022] [Accepted: 05/03/2022] [Indexed: 06/15/2023]
Abstract
OBJECTIVE Some cochlear implant (CI) users report having difficulty accessing indexical information in the speech signal, presumably due to limitations in the transmission of fine spectrotemporal cues. The purpose of this review article was to systematically review and evaluate the existing research on talker processing in CI users. Specifically, we reviewed the performance of CI users in three types of talker- and voice-related tasks. We also examined the different factors (such as participant, hearing, and device characteristics) that might influence performance in these specific tasks. DESIGN We completed a systematic search of the literature with select key words using citation aggregation software to search Google Scholar. We included primary reports that tested (a) talker discrimination, (b) voice perception, and (c) talker identification. Each report must have had at least one group of participants with CIs. Each included study was also evaluated for quality of evidence. RESULTS The searches resulted in 1,561 references, which were first screened for inclusion and then evaluated in full. Forty-three studies examining talker discrimination, voice perception, and talker identification were included in the final review. Most studies were focused on postlingually deafened and implanted adult CI users, with fewer studies focused on prelingual implant users. In general, CI users performed above chance in these tasks. When there was a difference between groups, CI users performed less accurately than their normal-hearing (NH) peers. A subset of CI users reached the same level of performance as NH participants exposed to noise-vocoded stimuli. Some studies found that CI users and NH participants relied on different cues for talker perception. Within groups of CI users, there is moderate evidence for a bimodal benefit for talker processing, and there are mixed findings about the effects of hearing experience. CONCLUSIONS The current review highlights the challenges faced by CI users in tracking and recognizing voices and how they adapt to it. Although large variability exists, there is evidence that CI users can process indexical information from speech, though with less accuracy than their NH peers. Recent work has described some of the factors that might ease the challenges of talker processing in CI users. We conclude by suggesting some future avenues of research to optimize real-world speech outcomes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sarah Colby
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Iowa, Iowa City
| | - Adriel John Orena
- Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
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Koelewijn T, Gaudrain E, Tamati T, Başkent D. The effects of lexical content, acoustic and linguistic variability, and vocoding on voice cue perception. THE JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA 2021; 150:1620. [PMID: 34598602 DOI: 10.1121/10.0005938] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/21/2021] [Accepted: 08/02/2021] [Indexed: 06/13/2023]
Abstract
Perceptual differences in voice cues, such as fundamental frequency (F0) and vocal tract length (VTL), can facilitate speech understanding in challenging conditions. Yet, we hypothesized that in the presence of spectrotemporal signal degradations, as imposed by cochlear implants (CIs) and vocoders, acoustic cues that overlap for voice perception and phonemic categorization could be mistaken for one another, leading to a strong interaction between linguistic and indexical (talker-specific) content. Fifteen normal-hearing participants performed an odd-one-out adaptive task measuring just-noticeable differences (JNDs) in F0 and VTL. Items used were words (lexical content) or time-reversed words (no lexical content). The use of lexical content was either promoted (by using variable items across comparison intervals) or not (fixed item). Finally, stimuli were presented without or with vocoding. Results showed that JNDs for both F0 and VTL were significantly smaller (better) for non-vocoded compared with vocoded speech and for fixed compared with variable items. Lexical content (forward vs reversed) affected VTL JNDs in the variable item condition, but F0 JNDs only in the non-vocoded, fixed condition. In conclusion, lexical content had a positive top-down effect on VTL perception when acoustic and linguistic variability was present but not on F0 perception. Lexical advantage persisted in the most degraded conditions and vocoding even enhanced the effect of item variability, suggesting that linguistic content could support compensation for poor voice perception in CI users.
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Affiliation(s)
- Thomas Koelewijn
- Department of Otorhinolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery, University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
| | - Etienne Gaudrain
- CNRS Unité Mixte de Recherche 5292, Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, Auditory Cognition and Psychoacoustics, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale, UMRS 1028, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, Université de Lyon, Lyon, France
| | - Terrin Tamati
- Department of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery, The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA
| | - Deniz Başkent
- Department of Otorhinolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery, University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
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Nogueira W, Boghdady NE, Langner F, Gaudrain E, Başkent D. Effect of Channel Interaction on Vocal Cue Perception in Cochlear Implant Users. Trends Hear 2021; 25:23312165211030166. [PMID: 34461780 PMCID: PMC8411629 DOI: 10.1177/23312165211030166] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/12/2020] [Revised: 06/14/2021] [Accepted: 06/16/2021] [Indexed: 11/16/2022] Open
Abstract
Speech intelligibility in multitalker settings is challenging for most cochlear implant (CI) users. One possibility for this limitation is the suboptimal representation of vocal cues in implant processing, such as the fundamental frequency (F0), and the vocal tract length (VTL). Previous studies suggested that while F0 perception depends on spectrotemporal cues, VTL perception relies largely on spectral cues. To investigate how spectral smearing in CIs affects vocal cue perception in speech-on-speech (SoS) settings, adjacent electrodes were simultaneously stimulated using current steering in 12 Advanced Bionics users to simulate channel interaction. In current steering, two adjacent electrodes are simultaneously stimulated forming a channel of parallel stimulation. Three such stimulation patterns were used: Sequential (one current steering channel), Paired (two channels), and Triplet stimulation (three channels). F0 and VTL just-noticeable differences (JNDs; Task 1), in addition to SoS intelligibility (Task 2) and comprehension (Task 3), were measured for each stimulation strategy. In Tasks 2 and 3, four maskers were used: the same female talker, a male voice obtained by manipulating both F0 and VTL (F0+VTL) of the original female speaker, a voice where only F0 was manipulated, and a voice where only VTL was manipulated. JNDs were measured relative to the original voice for the F0, VTL, and F0+VTL manipulations. When spectral smearing was increased from Sequential to Triplet, a significant deterioration in performance was observed for Tasks 1 and 2, with no differences between Sequential and Paired stimulation. Data from Task 3 were inconclusive. These results imply that CI users may tolerate certain amounts of channel interaction without significant reduction in performance on tasks relying on voice perception. This points to possibilities for using parallel stimulation in CIs for reducing power consumption.
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Affiliation(s)
- Waldo Nogueira
- Department of Otolaryngology, Medical University
Hannover and Cluster of Excellence Hearing4all, Hanover, Germany
| | - Nawal El Boghdady
- Department of Otorhinolaryngology, University Medical
Center Groningen, University of Groningen, Groningen,
Netherlands
- Research School of Behavioral and Cognitive
Neurosciences, University of
Groningen, University of Groningen, Groningen,
Netherlands
| | - Florian Langner
- Department of Otolaryngology, Medical University
Hannover and Cluster of Excellence Hearing4all, Hanover, Germany
| | - Etienne Gaudrain
- Department of Otorhinolaryngology, University Medical
Center Groningen, University of Groningen, Groningen,
Netherlands
- Research School of Behavioral and Cognitive
Neurosciences, University of
Groningen, University of Groningen, Groningen,
Netherlands
- Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, CNRS UMR 5292,
INSERM U1028, University Lyon 1, Lyon, France
| | - Deniz Başkent
- Department of Otorhinolaryngology, University Medical
Center Groningen, University of Groningen, Groningen,
Netherlands
- Research School of Behavioral and Cognitive
Neurosciences, University of
Groningen, University of Groningen, Groningen,
Netherlands
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