title: Consonant perception by users of Nucleus and Clarion multichannel cochlear implants.
abstract: A study was carried out to compare the consonant perceptions of five Nucleus multichannel cochlear implant users, five Clarion-CIS users, and four Clarion-CA users. All subjects were administered the Iowa Medical Consonant Recognition Test in the auditory-only condition. The groups averaged approximately 1 year of implant use at the time of testing, and the average age at implantation was 47 years for the Nucleus users, 60 years for the Clarion-CIS users, and 56 years for the Clarion-CA users. The percent-corrected scores for all three devices were variable and ranged from 34% to 84%, with each group averaging about 50% correct consonant recognition. Consonant feature information transmission was calculated for five features: manner of articulation, nasality, place of articulation, duration, and voicing. The highest information transmission in the Nucleus group was for the features of duration (71%), nasality (60%), and voicing (57%), which agrees with previous studies. The Clarion-CIS group had the highest information transmission for duration, place of articulation, manner of articulation, and nasality (50%, 29%, 28%, and 27%). The Clarion-CA group had the highest information transmission for the features voicing, place of articulation, and duration (41%, 40%, and 37%). This study indicates that the Clarion device may carry some acoustic information related to place of articulation, a feature that has not been found to be encoded well by other multichannel cochlear implants.
authors.affiliation: Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, University of California Irvine Medical Center, Orange 92668, USA.
authors.forename: K J
authors.initials: KJ
authors.lastname: Doyle
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Mills
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Larky
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Kessler
authors.forename: W M
authors.initials: WM
authors.lastname: Luxford
authors.forename: R A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Schindler
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D001307:Auditory Perception; D003054:Cochlear Implants; D004867:Equipment Design; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D010700:Phonetics; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013065:Speech Intelligibility; D013067:Speech Perception