Arras Tine, Rachman Laura, van Wieringen Astrid, Başkent Deniz
ExpORL, Dept. Neurosciences, KU Leuven, Belgium; Cochlear Technology Centre, Belgium.
Dept. of Otorhinolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery, University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, The Netherlands; Research School of Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience, Graduate School of Medical Sciences, University of Groningen, The Netherlands; W.J. Kolff Institute for Biomedical Engineering and Materials Science, Graduate School of Medical Sciences, University of Groningen, The Netherlands.
Hear Res. 2024 Dec;454:109133. doi: 10.1016/j.heares.2024.109133. Epub 2024 Oct 17.
Voice cues, such as fundamental frequency (F0) and vocal tract length (VTL), help listeners identify the speaker's gender, perceive the linguistic and emotional prosody, and segregate competing talkers. Postlingually implanted adult cochlear implant (CI) users seem to have difficulty in perceiving and making use of voice cues, especially of VTL. Early implanted child CI users, in contrast, perceive and make use of both voice cues better than CI adults, and in patterns similar to their peers with normal hearing (NH). In our study, we investigated the perception and use of voice cues in children with single-sided deafness (SSD) who received their CI at an early age (SSD+CI), in an attempt to bridge the gap between these two groups. The SSD+CI children have access to bilateral auditory information and often receive their CI at an early age, similar to CI children. They may also have dominant acoustic representations, similar to CI adults who acquired hearing loss at a later age. As such, the current study aimed to investigate the perception and use of voice cues by a group of nine early-implanted children with prelingual SSD. The study consisted of three experiments: F0 and VTL discrimination, voice gender categorization, and speech-in-speech perception. In each experiment, the results of the SSD group are compared to children and adults with CIs (for their CI ear) and with typical hearing (for their NH ear). Overall, the SSD+CI children had poorer VTL detection thresholds with their CI compared to their NH ear, while their F0 perception was similar across ears. Detection thresholds for both F0 and VTL with their CI ear was comparable to those of bilaterally implanted CI children, suggesting that SSD+CI children do not only rely on their NH ear, but actually make use of their CI. SSD+CI children relied more heavily on F0 cues than on VTL cues for voice gender categorization, with cue weighting patterns comparable to those of CI adults. In contrast to CI children, the SSD+CI children showed limited speech perception benefit based on F0 and VTL differences between the target and masker speaker, which again corresponded to the results of CI adults. Altogether, the SSD+CI children make good use of their CI, despite a good-hearing ear, however, the perceptual patterns seem to fall in-between those of CI children and CI adults. Perhaps a combination of childhood neuroplasticity, limited experience with relying only on the CI, and a dominant acoustic representation of voice gender explain these results.
语音线索，如基频（F0）和声道长度（VTL），有助于听众识别说话者的性别、感知语言和情感韵律，以及区分同时说话的不同人。语后聋成年人工耳蜗（CI）使用者似乎在感知和利用语音线索方面存在困难，尤其是VTL线索。相比之下，早期植入人工耳蜗的儿童使用者在感知和利用这两种语音线索方面比成年CI使用者更好，且模式与听力正常（NH）的同龄人相似。在我们的研究中，我们调查了早年接受人工耳蜗植入的单侧聋（SSD）儿童（SSD+CI）对语音线索的感知和利用情况，试图弥合这两组人群之间的差距。SSD+CI儿童能够获得双侧听觉信息，并且通常在幼年时接受人工耳蜗植入，这与CI儿童相似。他们也可能有占主导地位的声学表征，这与较晚发生听力损失的CI成年人类似。因此，本研究旨在调查一组九名早年植入人工耳蜗的语前聋SSD儿童对语音线索的感知和利用情况。该研究包括三个实验：F0和VTL辨别、语音性别分类以及语音中语音感知。在每个实验中，将SSD组的结果与CI使用者儿童和成人（针对他们的CI耳）以及听力正常者（针对他们的NH耳）进行比较。总体而言，SSD+CI儿童使用CI时的VTL检测阈值与其NH耳相比更差，而他们对F0的感知在双耳间相似。他们CI耳对F0和VTL的检测阈值与双侧植入CI的儿童相当，这表明SSD+CI儿童不仅依赖他们的NH耳，实际上也在利用他们的CI。在语音性别分类方面，SSD+CI儿童更依赖F0线索而非VTL线索，线索加权模式与CI成年人类似。与CI儿童不同，SSD+CI儿童基于目标说话者和掩蔽说话者之间的F0和VTL差异所获得的语音感知益处有限，这再次与CI成年组的结果相符。总体而言，SSD+CI儿童尽管有一只听力正常的耳朵，但仍能很好地利用他们的CI，然而，其感知模式似乎介于CI儿童和CI成年组之间。也许儿童期的神经可塑性、仅依赖人工耳蜗的有限经验以及语音性别的占主导地位的声学表征共同解释了这些结果。
