Gender Categorization Is Abnormal in Cochlear Impl

Authors: Christina D Fuller Etienne Gaudrain Jeanne N Clarke John J Galvin QianJie Fu Rolien H Free Deniz Başkent

Publish Date: 2014/08/30

Volume: 15, Issue: 6, Pages: 1037-1048

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Abstract

In normal hearing NH the perception of the gender of a speaker is strongly affected by two anatomically related vocal characteristics the fundamental frequency F0 related to vocal pitch and the vocal tract length VTL related to the height of the speaker Previous studies on gender categorization in cochlear implant CI users found that performance was variable with few CI users performing at the level of NH listeners Data collected with recorded speech produced by multiple talkers suggests that CI users might rely more on F0 and less on VTL than NH listeners However because VTL cannot be accurately estimated from recordings it is difficult to know how VTL contributes to gender categorization In the present study speech was synthesized to systematically vary F0 VTL or both Gender categorization was measured in CI users as well as in NH participants listening to unprocessed only synthesized and vocoded and synthesized speech Perceptual weights for F0 and VTL were derived from the performance data With unprocessed speech NH listeners used both cues normalized perceptual weight F0 = 376 VTL = 556 With vocoded speech NH listeners still made use of both cues but less efficiently normalized perceptual weight F0 = 168 VTL = 063 CI users relied almost exclusively on F0 while VTL perception was profoundly impaired normalized perceptual weight F0 = 688 VTL = 059 As a result CI users’ gender categorization was abnormal compared to NH listeners Future CI signal processing should aim to improve the transmission of both F0 cues and VTL cues as a normal gender categorization may benefit speech understanding in competing talker situationsWe would like to thank the participants in this study Furthermore we would like to thank Joeri Smit and Karin van der Velde for their help with collecting the data as well as Anita Wagner for her advice regarding statistical methods The fourth author is supported by a NIH R01DC004792 grant The sixth author is supported by an otological/neurotological stipendium from the HeinsiusHoubolt Foundation The last author is supported by a Rosalind Franklin Fellowship from the University Medical Center Groningen University of Groningen and the VIDI grant 016096397 from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research NWO and the Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development ZonMw The study is part of the research program of our department Healthy Aging and Communication

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