Voice cue sensitivity in children with cochlear implants and with hearing aids

Abstract

Voice cues, such as fundamental frequency (F0) and vocal-tract length (VTL), allow listeners to distinguish speakers, which can facilitate speech perception in challenging listening conditions. Children with typical hearing continue to develop their sensitivity to F0 and VTL differences throughout childhood, but this is not as clear for children with hearing loss. In prelingually deaf implanted children with cochlear implants (CIs), reduced spectrotemporal details may cause a delay or even a plateau in the development of voice cue sensitivity, while neuroplasticity may compensate for these factors. For children with hearing aids, it is unclear how voice cue perception could be affected by combined factors of neuroplasticity, physiological aspects of hearing loss, and compensatory front-end processing of hearing aids. Here, we will present recent work on F0 and VTL sensitivity in children with CIs and with hearing aids (4–18 years). Our results show a large variability in both CI and hearing-aided children, with some children performing at the level of age-matched normal-hearing children, while others performing lower. Both groups show trends for development as a function of age, but these seem to differ for F0 and VTL. Potential factors that may be contributing to these results will be discussed during the presentation.