Musical Interval Perception With a Cochlear Implant Alone and With a Contralateral Normal Hearing Ear

Area of Science:

• Auditory Neuroscience
• Psychoacoustics
• Speech and Hearing Science

Background:

• Music perception via cochlear implants (CI) is often described as out-of-tune.
• This may stem from insufficient pitch information or distorted interval sizes.
• Understanding interval perception is crucial for improving music experience with CIs.

Purpose of the Study:

• To quantitatively measure musical interval perception through CIs.
• To compare CI performance with normal hearing (NH) and combined CI/NH listening.
• To investigate factors contributing to distorted musical intervals in CI users.

Main Methods:

• Listeners identified prerecorded vowels to represent notes in "Happy Birthday" using their CI.
• The experiment was repeated with their contralateral normal hearing (NH) ear for within-subject control.
• Simultaneous listening with both CI and NH ears was also assessed.

Main Results:

• Interval perception accuracy varied among CI users, with some showing high correlation to target intervals.
• CI performance in chosen interval size was generally poorer than with NH ears.
• Simultaneous CI/NH listening yielded results similar to NH alone, indicating minimal added benefit.

Conclusions:

• Accurate musical interval perception is achievable through CIs for some individuals.
• Interval size perception can be distorted, with some listeners perceiving intervals as smaller than they are.
• The addition of a CI does not significantly alter interval perception when normal hearing is present.