Abstract
Pitch perception is known to be difficult for individuals with cochlear implant (CI), and adding a hearing aid (HA) in the non-implanted ear is potentially beneficial. The current study aimed to investigate the bimodal benefit for lexical tone recognition in Mandarin-speaking preschoolers using a CI and an HA in opposite ears. The child participants were required to complete tone identification in quiet and in noise with CI + HA in comparison with CI alone. While the bimodal listeners showed confusion between Tone 2 and Tone 3 in recognition, the additional acoustic information from the contralateral HA alleviated confusion between these two tones in quiet. Moreover, significant improvement was demonstrated in the CI + HA condition over the CI alone condition in noise. The bimodal benefit for individual subjects could be predicted by the low-frequency hearing threshold of the non-implanted ear and the duration of bimodal use. The findings support the clinical practice to fit a contralateral HA in the non-implanted ear for the potential benefit in Mandarin tone recognition in CI children. The limitations call for further studies on auditory plasticity on an individual basis to gain insights on the contributing factors to the bimodal benefit or its absence.
Highlights
As a highlight of groundbreaking neural prosthesis in bioengineering, the cochlear implant (CI)provides accessibility to sound for individuals with profound hearing impairment [1,2]
The average rationalized arcsine unit (RAU) scores of tonal identification for CI alone and CI + hearing aid (HA) device conditions were, respectively, 93.95 (SD = 11.09) and 95.04 (SD = 11.64) in quiet, and 61.76 (SD = 17.91) and 69.17 (SD = 16.62) in noise. Both Tone 1 (T1) and Tone 4 (T4) obtained nearly perfect scores whereas Tone 2 (T2) was mainly misidentified as Tone 3 (T3), and
T1 was mainly misidentified as T2, T2 was mainly misidentified as T3, and T3 was mainly misidentified as T2
Summary
As a highlight of groundbreaking neural prosthesis in bioengineering, the cochlear implant (CI)provides accessibility to sound for individuals with profound hearing impairment [1,2]. The remarkable success of the CI is largely attributable to the proper use of signal transduction technology to harness central auditory plasticity of the implantees [2]. While CI users can significantly benefit from the neuroplasticity driven by the CI-empowered learning experience in developing their auditory, linguistic, and cognitive skills [3,4,5,6,7,8,9], pitch perception poses a unique challenge for these individuals. CI multichannel technology that encodes degraded spectral-temporal signals of the auditory input. Degradations in the representation can impair and even preclude the reception of pitch cues. The current study on Mandarin Chinese speakers aimed to investigate applicable interventions in alleviating the deficits in the representation and reception of pitch information for the pediatric CI users
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
