title: Children With Cochlear implants recognize their mother's voice.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The available research indicates that cochlear implant (CI) users have difficulty in differentiating talkers, especially those of the same gender. The goal of this study was to determine whether child CI users could differentiate talkers under favorable stimulus and task conditions. We predicted that the use of a highly familiar voice, full sentences, and a game-like task with feedback would lead to higher performance levels than those achieved in previous studies of talker identification in CI users.
  
  
  METHODS
  In experiment 1, 21 CI users aged 4.8 to 14.3 yrs and 16 normal-hearing (NH) 5-yr-old children were required to differentiate their mother's scripted utterances from those of an unfamiliar man, woman, and girl in a four-alternative forced-choice task with feedback. In one condition, the utterances incorporated natural prosodic variations. In another condition, nonmaternal talkers imitated the prosody of each maternal utterance. In experiment 2, 19 of the child CI users and 11 of the NH children from experiment 1 returned on a subsequent occasion to participate in a task that required them to differentiate their mother's utterances from those of unfamiliar women in a two-alternative forced-choice task with feedback. Again, one condition had natural prosodic variations and another had maternal imitations.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Child CI users in experiment 1 succeeded in differentiating their mother's utterances from those of a man, woman, and girl. Their performance was poorer than the performance of younger NH children, which was at ceiling. Child CI users' performance was better in the context of natural prosodic variations than in the context of imitations of maternal prosody. Child CI users in experiment 2 differentiated their mother's utterances from that of other women, and they also performed better on naturally varying samples than on imitations.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We attribute child CI users' success on talker differentiation, even on same-gender differentiation, to their use of two types of temporal cues: variations in consonant and vowel articulation and variations in speaking rate. Moreover, we contend that child CI users' differentiation of speakers was facilitated by long-term familiarity with their mother's voice.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: Tara
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Vongpaisal
authors.forename: Sandra E
authors.initials: SE
authors.lastname: Trehub
authors.forename: E Glenn
authors.initials: EG
authors.lastname: Schellenberg
authors.forename: Pascal
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: van Lieshout
authors.forename: Blake C
authors.initials: BC
authors.lastname: Papsin
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003054:Cochlear Implants; D003463:Cues; D003638:Deafness / Q000523:psychology* / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009035:Mothers; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D013067:Speech Perception; D013997:Time Factors; D014831:Voice