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Updated: Oct 23, 2025

Author Spotlight: Investigating the Impact of Emotional Prosodies on Voice Recognition and Perception
Published on: August 9, 2024
Age-Related Changes in Voice Emotion Recognition by Postlingually Deafened Listeners With Cochlear Implants
Shauntelle A Cannon1,2, Monita Chatterjee1
1Auditory Prostheses & Perception Laboratory, Center for Hearing Research, Boys Town National Research Hospital, Omaha, NE.
Vocal emotion recognition declines with age in both normally hearing adults and cochlear implant (CI) users. Older CI users show greater deficits, impacting social communication and well-being.
Area of Science:
- Auditory Neuroscience
- Speech Perception
- Gerontology
Background:
- Normal hearing adults experience age-related declines in identifying emotional prosody.
- Cochlear implant (CI) users often have prosody perception deficits, but age effects are unknown.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate age-related changes in vocal emotion recognition in adult postlingually deaf CI users and normally hearing (NH) listeners.
- To compare emotion recognition abilities between CI users and NH individuals across different age groups.
Main Methods:
- Participants included 18 CI users and 43 NH adults, aged 25-75 years.
- Listeners identified emotions (happy, sad, scared, angry, neutral) in sentences.
- Sensitivity (d') and reaction times were measured using a forced-choice paradigm.
Main Results:
- NH listeners showed age-related declines in accuracy and sensitivity, with increased reaction times.
- CI users exhibited overall emotion perception deficits and age-related declines in sensitivity.
- CI users had elevated reaction times compared to NH listeners, without significant age-related changes.
Conclusions:
- Both CI users and NH listeners experience age-related deficits in emotion identification.
- CI users' impaired emotion perception and slower responses may affect social communication and well-being.
- Older CI users may be particularly vulnerable due to the association between lower emotion recognition scores and poorer quality of life.
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