Perceptual weighting strategies of children with cochlear implants and normal hearing

This study compared perceptual weighting strategies of children with cochlear implants (CIs) and children with normal hearing (NH), and asked if strategies are explained solely by degraded spectral representations, or if diminished language experience accounts for some of the effect. Relationships between weighting strategies and other language skills were examined.

One hundred 8-year-olds (49 with NH and 51 with CIs) were tested on four measures: (1) labeling of cop-cob and sa-sha stimuli; (2) discrimination of the acoustic cues to the cop-cob decision; (3) phonemic awareness; and (4) word recognition.

No differences in weighting of cues to the cop-cob decision were observed between children with CIs and NH, suggesting that language experience was sufficient for the children with CIs. Differences in weighting of cues to the sa-sha decision were found, but were not entirely explained by auditory sensitivity. Weighting strategies were related to phonemic awareness and word recognition.

More salient cues facilitate stronger weighting of those cues. Nonetheless, individuals differ in how salient cues need to be to capture perceptual attention. Familiarity with stimuli also affects how reliably children attend to acoustic cues. Training should help children with CIs learn to categorize speech sounds with less-salient cues.

After reading this article, the learner should be able to: (1) recognize methods and motivations for studying perceptual weighting strategies in speech perception; (2) explain how signal quality and language experience affect the development of weighting strategies for children with cochlear implants and children with normal hearing; and (3) summarize the importance of perceptual weighting strategies for other aspects of language functioning.