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Systematic Hearing Performance Evaluation Process for Adolescents with Cochlear Implantation at Early Ages
Published on: March 24, 2023
Perceptual dialect categorization by an adult cochlear implant user: a case study
Cynthia G Clopper1, David B Pisoni
1Speech Research Laboratory, Department of Psychology. Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA.
International Congress Series
|March 23, 2011
Summary
Cochlear implant (CI) users can perceive talker-specific speech information, like dialect. This study shows a CI user performed similarly to normal-hearing listeners in a dialect categorization task.
Area of Science:
- Auditory Neuroscience
- Speech Perception
- Cochlear Implants
Background:
- Speech perception involves linguistic and non-linguistic (indexical) information.
- Indexical information (age, gender, dialect) processing impacts speech perception in cochlear implant (CI) users.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if a post-lingually deafened adult CI user can perceive indexical speech properties.
- To assess the CI user's ability to categorize talker dialect.
Main Methods:
- A six-alternative forced-choice dialect categorization task was administered.
- The participant was an adult CI user with 8 years of experience.
- Performance was compared to 30 normal-hearing controls.
Main Results:
- The CI user's performance was statistically above chance.
- The CI user's scores were within one standard deviation of normal-hearing controls.
- This indicates the CI user could perceive and encode non-linguistic speech information.
Conclusions:
- Adult CI users can perceive and utilize indexical speech information, such as dialect.
- Cochlear implants facilitate the processing of non-linguistic speech cues.
- This finding has implications for speech processing and communication in CI users.
