Segmental contributions to cochlear implant speech perception

Abstract

The present work assessed segmental contributions to speech perception by listeners who had been bilaterally fitted with cochlear implants (CIs). TIMIT sentences were edited to contain vowels (Vs) (replacing consonants with silence) or consonants (Cs) (replacing vowels with silence) and vowel-consonant (V-C) transitions, then presented to unilaterally or bilaterally fitted CI listeners for recognition. Experimental results showed that segmental interruption had a significant influence on CI speech perception. Vowels contained more perceptual information than consonants, and V-C transitions could significantly improve the intelligibility of V-only or C-only sentences. In addition, the intelligibility of several segmentally processed sentences may be significantly improved with bilateral CI hearing relative to the unilateral scenario. The present work asserted the importance of vowels and V-C transitions for speech perception by implanted patients, which is consistent with early studies of normal-hearing listeners, and suggested that the speech perception performance under segmentally interrupted conditions could benefit from the usage of bilateral CIs.