TY - JOUR
T1 - Effect of relative amplitude and formant transitions on perception of place of articulation by adult listeners with cochlear implants
AU - Hedrick, Mark S.
AU - Carney, Arlene Earley
PY - 1997/12
Y1 - 1997/12
N2 - Previous studies have shown that manipulation of a particular frequency region of the consonantal portion of a syllable relative to the amplitude of the same frequency region in an adjacent vowel influences the perception of place of articulation. This manipulation has been called the relative amplitude cue. Earlier studies have examined the effect of relative amplitude and formant transition manipulations upon labeling place of articulation for fricatives and stop consonants in listeners with normal hearing. The current study sought to determine if (a) the relative amplitude cue is used by adult listeners wearing a cochlear implant to label place of articulation, and (b) adult listeners wearing a cochlear implant integrated the relative amplitude and formant transition information differently than listeners with normal hearing. Sixteen listeners participated in the study, 12 with normal hearing and 4 postlingually deafened adults wearing the Nucleus 22 electrode Mini Speech Processor implant with the multipeak processing strategy. The stimuli used were synthetic consonant-vowel (CV) syllables in which relative amplitude and formant transitions were manipulated. The two speech contrasts examined were the voiceless fricative contrast /s/-/∫/ and the voiceless stop consonant contrast /p/-/t/. For each contrast, listeners were asked to label the consonant sound in the syllable from the two response alternatives. Results showed that (a) listeners wearing this implant could use relative amplitude to consistently label place of articulation, and (b) listeners with normal hearing integrated the relative amplitude and formant transition information mare than listeners wearing a cochlear implant, who weighted the relative amplitude information as much as 13 times that of the transition information.
AB - Previous studies have shown that manipulation of a particular frequency region of the consonantal portion of a syllable relative to the amplitude of the same frequency region in an adjacent vowel influences the perception of place of articulation. This manipulation has been called the relative amplitude cue. Earlier studies have examined the effect of relative amplitude and formant transition manipulations upon labeling place of articulation for fricatives and stop consonants in listeners with normal hearing. The current study sought to determine if (a) the relative amplitude cue is used by adult listeners wearing a cochlear implant to label place of articulation, and (b) adult listeners wearing a cochlear implant integrated the relative amplitude and formant transition information differently than listeners with normal hearing. Sixteen listeners participated in the study, 12 with normal hearing and 4 postlingually deafened adults wearing the Nucleus 22 electrode Mini Speech Processor implant with the multipeak processing strategy. The stimuli used were synthetic consonant-vowel (CV) syllables in which relative amplitude and formant transitions were manipulated. The two speech contrasts examined were the voiceless fricative contrast /s/-/∫/ and the voiceless stop consonant contrast /p/-/t/. For each contrast, listeners were asked to label the consonant sound in the syllable from the two response alternatives. Results showed that (a) listeners wearing this implant could use relative amplitude to consistently label place of articulation, and (b) listeners with normal hearing integrated the relative amplitude and formant transition information mare than listeners wearing a cochlear implant, who weighted the relative amplitude information as much as 13 times that of the transition information.
KW - Cochlear implants
KW - Consonant perception
KW - Deafness
KW - Integration of acoustic cues
KW - Speech perception
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U2 - 10.1044/jslhr.4006.1445
DO - 10.1044/jslhr.4006.1445
M3 - Article
C2 - 9430763
AN - SCOPUS:0031469813
SN - 1092-4388
VL - 40
SP - 1445
EP - 1457
JO - Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research
JF - Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research
IS - 6
ER -