Voice Emotion Recognition by Mandarin-Speaking Children with Cochlear Implants.

Area of Science:

• Auditory Neuroscience
• Speech and Hearing Sciences
• Developmental Psychology

Background:

• Emotional expression is crucial for social interaction.
• Cochlear implant (CI) device limitations can impair voice emotion recognition in children.
• Mandarin-speaking children with CIs may face unique challenges due to tonal language features and pitch information loss.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate voice emotion recognition in Mandarin-speaking children with CIs compared to normal-hearing peers.
• To compare performance using adult-directed versus child-directed speech materials.
• To identify factors influencing emotion recognition in children with CIs.

Main Methods:

• Recruited 30 children with CIs and 27 normal-hearing children (ages 6.92-17.08).
• Administered nonverbal reasoning, speech recognition, and a five-emotion (happy, angry, sad, scared, neutral) voice emotion recognition task.
• Utilized both child-directed and adult-directed speech stimuli.

Main Results:

• Children with CIs performed significantly worse than normal-hearing peers in voice emotion perception.
• Both groups showed better performance with child-directed speech materials.
• Mean fundamental frequency significantly impacted speech emotion recognition in both groups.

Conclusions:

• Mandarin-speaking children with CIs exhibit voice emotion recognition deficits.
• Child-directed speech, with its exaggerated prosody, benefits children with CIs.
• Age at implantation, cognition, and speech development are key factors in CI users' emotion perception.