Open AccessIndividual Variability in Recalibrating to Spectrally Shifted Speech: Implications for Cochlear Implants
Author(s) -
M. J. H. Smith,
Matthew B. Winn
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
ear and hearing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.577
H-Index - 109
eISSN - 1538-4667
pISSN - 0196-0202
DOI - 10.1097/aud.0000000000001043
Subject(s) - audiology , cochlear implant , cochlear implantation , speech perception , speech recognition , acoustics , psychology , medicine , computer science , physics , neuroscience , perception
Cochlear implant (CI) recipients are at a severe disadvantage compared with normal-hearing listeners in distinguishing consonants that differ by place of articulation because the key relevant spectral differences are degraded by the implant. One component of that degradation is the upward shifting of spectral energy that occurs with a shallow insertion depth of a CI. The present study aimed to systematically measure the effects of spectral shifting on word recognition and phoneme categorization by specifically controlling the amount of shifting and using stimuli whose identification specifically depends on perceiving frequency cues. We hypothesized that listeners would be biased toward perceiving phonemes that contain higher-frequency components because of the upward frequency shift and that intelligibility would decrease as spectral shifting increased.