Relative performance of single-channel and multichannel tactile aids for speech perception

Although the results from a number of studies of the performance of multichannel tactile aids for speech perception have suggested that such devices might provide more benefit to hearing-impaired persons than single-channel tactile aids (3,4), recent studies involving direct comparisons of multichannel and single-channel vibrotactile aids (5,6) indicated otherwise. In fact, for some types of speech information, such as rhythm and stress perception, single-channel aids were shown to be superior. The present study attempted to address this apparent discrepancy by comparing the performance of two single-channel devices with two multichannel devices in a variety of speech perception tasks including both single-item and connected speech stimuli. Results indicated that the two classes of tactile device performed similarly in rhythm and stress perception, but that the multichannel aids in many cases showed better performance for tasks in which the identification of fine-structure phoneme information was required (both single-item and connected speech). Results are discussed in terms of the possibility that the performance of a specific multichannel tactile aid cannot be considered indicative of all devices of the same class.