Recognition of spectrally asynchronous speech by normal-hearing listeners and Nucleus-22 cochlear implant users

This experiment examined the effects of spectral resolution and fine spectral structure on recognition of spectrally asynchronous sentences by normal-hearing and cochlear implant listeners. Sentence recognition was measured in six normal-hearing subjects listening to either full-spectrum or noise-band processors and five Nucleus-22 cochlear implant listeners fitted with 4-channel continuous interleaved sampling (CIS) processors. For the full-spectrum processor, the speech signals were divided into either 4 or 16 channels. For the noise-band processor, after band-pass filtering into 4 or 16 channels, the envelope of each channel was extracted and used to modulate noise of the same bandwidth as the analysis band, thus eliminating the fine spectral structure available in the full-spectrum processor. For the 4-channel CIS processor, the amplitude envelopes extracted from four bands were transformed to electric currents by a power function and the resulting electric currents were used to modulate pulse trains delivered to four electrode pairs. For all processors, the output of each channel was time-shifted relative to other channels, varying the channel delay across channels from 0 to 240 ms (in 40-ms steps). Within each delay condition, all channels were desynchronized such that the cross-channel delays between adjacent channels were maximized, thereby avoiding local pockets of channel synchrony. Results show no significant difference between the 4- and 16-channel full-spectrum speech processor for normal-hearing listeners. Recognition scores dropped significantly only when the maximum delay reached 200 ms for the 4-channel processor and 240 ms for the 16-channel processor. When fine spectral structures were removed in the noise-band processor, sentence recognition dropped significantly when the maximum delay was 160 ms for the 16-channel noise-band processor and 40 ms for the 4-channel noise-band processor. There was no significant difference between implant listeners using the 4-channel CIS processor and normal-hearing listeners using the 4-channel noise-band processor. The results imply that when fine spectral structures are not available, as in the implant listener's case, increased spectral resolution is important for overcoming cross-channel asynchrony in speech signals.