Acoustic Change Complexes Recorded in Adult Cochlear Implant Listeners

Abstract

The objectives of this study were to determine: 1) whether the acoustic change complex (ACC) could be reliably recorded in cochlear implant listeners and, 2) whether different speech sounds evoke distinct ACC patterns. Eight adults wearing the Nucleus-24 cochlear implant (CI) were tested using naturally produced speech tokens /si/ and /i/. Stimuli were tokens from the standardized UCLA version of the Nonsense Syllable Test. Using a repeated-measures design, participants were tested and retested within a 3-wk period. Intraclass correlation coefficients for grand mean and individual-response waveforms recorded from the syllables /si/ and /i/ ranged from 0.63 to 0.89 from test to retest. Also, ACC latencies signaling the onset of a vowel in /i/ were significantly earlier than those evoked by /si/. The ACC can be reliably recorded in individuals wearing CI. Furthermore, the naturally produced speech syllables /si/ and /i/ evoke distinct ACC patterns. Because of its good stability and the ease with which it can be recorded in individual CI listeners, the ACC can be evoked using complex signals (such as naturally produced speech syllables) when studying central auditory function in CI listeners.