title: Does acoustic fundamental frequency information enhance cochlear implant performance?
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Low-frequency information via an acoustic aid has been shown to increase speech intelligibility in noise for cochlear implant (CI) listeners. It has been suggested that fundamental frequency (F0) provides this advantage. This study aimed to investigate the contribution of F0.
  
  
  METHODS
  Seven cochlear implant users having residual hearing at 125, 250, and 500 Hz contralateral to the implant were recruited. Speech intelligibility in noise was measured using an adaptive procedure for three listening conditions: (1) CI alone, (2) CI plus filtered acoustic information contralaterally, and (3) CI plus acoustic F0 contralaterally. In condition 2, the sentence material was low-passed at 500 Hz and presented via an insert earphone into the contralateral ear. In condition 3, F0 was extracted using Praat and presented as a sine wave with the same F0 variation over time as the original sentence.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Although benefit was observed when low-frequency information was added for the majority of participants, on average no statistically significant difference was found for the three listening conditions.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These results are not consistent with current literature. It is proposed that glimpsing cues may be responsible for the advantage observed in previous studies; in this study, both target and masker were presented in the acoustic condition and this may explain the discrepancy.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The benefit of additional acoustic information may be highly variable and individual to participants, but on average no statistically significant difference was seen.
authors.forename: Laura
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Mulhern
authors.forename: Helen
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Cullington
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001309:Auditory Threshold; D019929:Cochlear Implantation / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D003054:Cochlear Implants; D003638:Deafness / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D005260:Female; D006309:Hearing; D006310:Hearing Aids; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009622:Noise; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D010898:Pitch Perception; D013063:Speech Discrimination Tests; D013067:Speech Perception
keywords: Bimodal hearing; Cochlear implant; Fundamental frequency; Hearing aid