University of Washington-Seattle, Seattle, WA, USA.
University of Washington-Bothell, Bothell, WA, USA.
Int J Audiol. 2019 Dec;58(12):913-922. doi: 10.1080/14992027.2019.1632498. Epub 2019 Jul 1.
Mandarin-speaking cochlear implant users have difficulty perceiving tonal changes in speech with current signal processing strategies. The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether English-speaking cochlear implant and normal hearing listeners can be trained to recognise closed-set Mandarin tones. The validity of using native-English speakers to evaluate Mandarin tone perception in cochlear implants was tested. Two groups of native-English speaking participants were evaluated. All listeners were given training rounds and evaluation rounds in which their tonal identification was tested. The normal-hearing group was also tested with acoustic simulations of the traditional Continuous Interleaved Sampling (CIS) strategy. Ten normal-hearing English speakers and seven cochlear implant listeners participated. The normal-hearing group correctly identified unprocessed tones at 87% and CIS-processed tones at 58% on average. The cochlear implant listeners achieved 56% correct identification on average. This level of performance for native English speaking CI users was comparable to previous studies using native Mandarin-speaking CI listeners, which showed a mean of 59% in 19 CI users.
说普通话的人工耳蜗使用者在使用当前信号处理策略时，难以感知言语中的声调变化。本研究旨在评估英语为母语的人工耳蜗使用者和正常听力者是否可以接受训练以识别普通话的封闭声调。测试了使用以英语为母语的人来评估人工耳蜗中普通话声调感知的有效性。评估了两组以英语为母语的参与者。所有听众都接受了培训轮次和评估轮次，在这些轮次中测试了他们的声调识别能力。正常听力组还用传统的连续交错采样（CIS）策略的声学模拟进行了测试。有 10 名正常听力的英语使用者和 7 名人工耳蜗使用者参加了研究。正常听力组正确识别未经处理的声调的比例为 87%，经 CIS 处理的声调的比例为 58%。人工耳蜗使用者的平均识别率为 56%。对于以英语为母语的人工耳蜗使用者来说，这种水平的表现与使用以普通话为母语的人工耳蜗使用者进行的先前研究相当，19 名人工耳蜗使用者的平均识别率为 59%。
