Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Iowa, Iowa City.
Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2022 Aug 17;65(8):3165-3194. doi: 10.1044/2022_JSLHR-21-00209. Epub 2022 Aug 4.
Some cochlear implant (CI) users report having difficulty accessing indexical information in the speech signal, presumably due to limitations in the transmission of fine spectrotemporal cues. The purpose of this review article was to systematically review and evaluate the existing research on talker processing in CI users. Specifically, we reviewed the performance of CI users in three types of talker- and voice-related tasks. We also examined the different factors (such as participant, hearing, and device characteristics) that might influence performance in these specific tasks.
We completed a systematic search of the literature with select key words using citation aggregation software to search Google Scholar. We included primary reports that tested (a) talker discrimination, (b) voice perception, and (c) talker identification. Each report must have had at least one group of participants with CIs. Each included study was also evaluated for quality of evidence.
The searches resulted in 1,561 references, which were first screened for inclusion and then evaluated in full. Forty-three studies examining talker discrimination, voice perception, and talker identification were included in the final review. Most studies were focused on postlingually deafened and implanted adult CI users, with fewer studies focused on prelingual implant users. In general, CI users performed above chance in these tasks. When there was a difference between groups, CI users performed less accurately than their normal-hearing (NH) peers. A subset of CI users reached the same level of performance as NH participants exposed to noise-vocoded stimuli. Some studies found that CI users and NH participants relied on different cues for talker perception. Within groups of CI users, there is moderate evidence for a bimodal benefit for talker processing, and there are mixed findings about the effects of hearing experience.
The current review highlights the challenges faced by CI users in tracking and recognizing voices and how they adapt to it. Although large variability exists, there is evidence that CI users can process indexical information from speech, though with less accuracy than their NH peers. Recent work has described some of the factors that might ease the challenges of talker processing in CI users. We conclude by suggesting some future avenues of research to optimize real-world speech outcomes.
一些人工耳蜗（CI）使用者报告在获取言语信号中的索引信息方面存在困难，这可能是由于精细频谱时间线索的传递受限所致。本文的目的是系统地回顾和评估 CI 使用者在说话人处理方面的现有研究。具体而言，我们回顾了 CI 使用者在三种与说话人及语音相关的任务中的表现。我们还研究了可能影响这些特定任务表现的不同因素（如参与者、听力和设备特征）。
我们使用引文聚合软件选择关键字对文献进行了系统搜索，并在 Google Scholar 上进行了搜索。我们纳入了测试（a）说话人辨别、（b）语音感知和（c）说话人识别的主要报告。每个报告必须至少有一组 CI 使用者参与者。每个纳入的研究还根据证据质量进行了评估。
搜索结果产生了 1561 条参考文献，首先对这些参考文献进行了纳入筛选，然后进行了全面评估。共有 43 项研究纳入了最终的综述，这些研究分别考察了说话人辨别、语音感知和说话人识别。大多数研究集中于后天聋和植入成人 CI 使用者，而较少研究关注于先天植入使用者。总的来说，CI 使用者在这些任务中的表现超过了随机水平。当组间存在差异时，CI 使用者的表现不如其正常听力（NH）同龄人准确。CI 使用者和暴露于噪声编码刺激的 NH 参与者的表现达到相同水平。一些研究发现，CI 使用者和 NH 参与者依赖于不同的线索来感知说话人。在 CI 使用者群体中，有中度证据表明双模态对说话人处理有益，而听力经验的影响则存在混合结果。
本综述强调了 CI 使用者在跟踪和识别声音方面面临的挑战，以及他们如何适应这些挑战。尽管存在很大的变异性，但有证据表明 CI 使用者可以处理言语中的索引信息，尽管准确性不如 NH 同龄人。最近的研究描述了一些可能减轻 CI 使用者说话人处理挑战的因素。我们最后提出了一些未来的研究途径，以优化现实世界中的言语结果。
