Department of Otorhinolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery, University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, the Netherlands.
Research School of Behavioral and Cognitive Neurosciences, Graduate School of Medical Sciences, University of Groningen, the Netherlands.
Trends Hear. 2020 Jan-Dec;24:2331216520904617. doi: 10.1177/2331216520904617.
In favorable listening conditions, cochlear-implant (CI) users can reach high speech recognition scores with as little as seven active electrodes. Here, we hypothesized that even when speech recognition is high, additional spectral channels may still benefit other aspects of speech perception, such as comprehension and listening effort. Twenty-five adult, postlingually deafened CI users, selected from two Dutch implant centers for high clinical word identification scores, participated in two experiments. Experimental conditions were created by varying the number of active electrodes of the CIs between 7 and 15. In Experiment 1, response times (RTs) on the secondary task in a dual-task paradigm were used as an indirect measure of listening effort, and in Experiment 2, sentence verification task (SVT) accuracy and RTs were used to measure speech comprehension and listening effort, respectively. Speech recognition was near ceiling for all conditions tested, as intended by the design. However, the dual-task paradigm failed to show the hypothesized decrease in RTs with increasing spectral channels. The SVT did show a systematic improvement in both speech comprehension and response speed across all conditions. In conclusion, the SVT revealed additional benefits in both speech comprehension and listening effort for conditions in which high speech recognition was already achieved. Hence, adding spectral channels may provide benefits for CI listeners that may not be reflected by traditional speech tests. The SVT is a relatively simple task that is easy to implement and may therefore be a good candidate for identifying such additional benefits in research or clinical settings.
在有利的听力条件下，人工耳蜗（CI）使用者只需使用 7 个激活电极即可达到很高的语音识别分数。在这里，我们假设即使语音识别率很高，额外的频谱通道仍然可能有益于语音感知的其他方面，例如理解和聆听努力。25 名成年后天失聪的 CI 用户从两个荷兰植入中心中选择，他们的临床单词识别得分很高，参与了两项实验。通过在 7 到 15 个之间改变 CI 的激活电极数量来创建实验条件。在实验 1 中，使用双任务范式中的次要任务的响应时间（RT）作为聆听努力的间接测量，而在实验 2 中，使用句子验证任务（SVT）的准确性和 RT 来分别测量语音理解和聆听努力。所有测试条件的语音识别率都接近上限，这是设计的意图。然而，双任务范式未能显示出预期的随着频谱通道增加而 RT 减少的情况。SVT 确实在所有条件下都显示出了在语音理解和响应速度方面的系统改善。总之，SVT 揭示了在已经实现高语音识别的条件下，在语音理解和聆听努力方面的额外益处。因此，增加频谱通道可能会为 CI 使用者提供传统语音测试可能无法反映的益处。SVT 是一项相对简单的任务，易于实施，因此可能是在研究或临床环境中识别此类额外益处的良好候选者。
