Vibrotactile stimulation for the adventitiously deaf: an alternative to cochlear implantation

Acoustic correlates of the prosodic features identifying English contrastive stress, ie, fundamental frequency (Fo), duration and intensity, and listener perceptions were investigated in a profoundly adventitiously deaf subject (D) pre/postvibrotactile stimulation, and in an age-peer normally-hearing person as a control (N). Stimuli were a group of general American English words in which a change of function from noun to verb was associated with a shift of stress from initial to final syllable, eg, CON'test vs conTEST'. Prior to vibrotactile stimulation, D was unable to produce contrastive stress correctly. Only final syllable intensity differences were noted, but proved to be inadequate cues for contrastive stress. Vibrotactile stimulation resulted in changes, specifically significantly higher Fo for initial stressed vs unstressed syllables, significantly louder intensity for final stressed vs unstressed syllables, and significantly longer duration for final stressed vs unstressed syllables. Perceptually, listeners judged D's contrastive stress placement as always occurring on the final syllable previbrotactile stimulation and as 78% correct postvibrotactile stimulation. N's contrastive stress placement was always correct. It was concluded that use of vibrotactile stimulation enhanced D's production and resulted in listeners' perceptions of correct prosody.