Telephone speech perception by Mandarin-speaking cochlear implantees.
OBJECTIVE
To evaluate Mandarin-speaking cochlear implant patients' understanding of telephone speech.


METHODS
Telephone speech was simulated by band-limiting broadband speech stimuli (300-3200 Hz) and adding Gaussian noise (35 dB signal-to-noise ratio). Recognition of multitalker vowels, consonants, voice gender, and Chinese tones was measured for both simulated telephone speech and broadband speech in fifteen Mandarin-speaking cochlear implant patients.


RESULTS
Results showed no significant difference in Chinese tone recognition scores between broadband and telephone speech. However, mean recognition scores for vowels, consonants and voice gender were significantly lower with telephone speech. The effect of the limited telephone bandwidth on speech recognition was highly variable among subjects. Some subjects were more sensitive to high-frequency speech cues, resulting in a significant drop in performance with band-limited telephone speech, while other subjects were less sensitive to high-frequency speech cues, resulting in similar performance between broadband and band-limited telephone speech.


CONCLUSIONS
These results suggest that the limited bandwidth negatively affects cochlear implant patients' understanding of telephone speech. Because the effect of band-limited speech was highly variable among subjects, the results also suggest that the contribution of high frequency information to speech recognition may vary significantly among cochlear implant patients. For patients who receive little benefit from high-frequency speech cues, speech processor adjustments may be necessary to access the additional cues provided in broadband speech.
Horng
Mei-Ji
MJ
Graduate Institute of Audiology and Speech Therapy, National Kaohsiung Normal University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
Chen
Hsiao-Chuan
HC
Hsu
Chuan-Jen
CJ
Fu
Qian-Jie
QJ
D000293:Adolescent; D044466:Asian People; D002648:Child; D003054:Cochlear Implants; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics; D013063:Speech Discrimination Tests; D013067:Speech Perception; D013689:Telephone