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Updated: Jun 2, 2026

Systematic Hearing Performance Evaluation Process for Adolescents with Cochlear Implantation at Early Ages
Published on: March 24, 2023
Use of intonation contours for speech recognition in noise by cochlear implant recipients
Hartmut Meister1, Markus Landwehr, Verena Pyschny
1Jean-Uhrmacher-Institute for Clinical ENT-Research, University of Cologne, Geibelstrasse 29-31, D-50931 Cologne, Germany. hartmut.meister@uni-koeln.de.
Abstract:
The corruption of intonation contours has detrimental effects on sentence-based speech recognition in normal-hearing listeners Binns and Culling [(2007). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 122, 1765-1776]. This paper examines whether this finding also applies to cochlear implant (CI) recipients. The subjects' F0-discrimination and speech perception in the presence of noise were measured, using sentences with regular and inverted F0-contours. The results revealed that speech recognition for regular contours was significantly better than for inverted contours. This difference was related to the subjects' F0-discrimination providing further evidence that the perception of intonation patterns is important for the CI-mediated speech recognition in noise.
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