title: Evaluation and analysis of whispered speech for cochlear implant users: Gender identification and intelligibility.
abstract: This study investigates the degree to which whispered speech impacts speech perception and gender identification in cochlear implant (CI) users. Listening experiments with six CI subjects under neutral and whispered speech conditions using sentences from the UT-Vocal Effort II corpus (recordings from male and female speakers) were conducted. Results indicated a significant effect of whispering on gender identification and speech intelligibility scores. In addition, no significant effect of talker gender on the speech/gender identification scores was observed. Results also suggested that exposure to longer speech stimuli, and consequently more temporal cues, would not improve gender identification performance in CI subjects.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical Engineering, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Texas 75080, USA.
authors.forename: Oldooz
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Hazrati
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical Engineering, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Texas 75080, USA.
authors.forename: Hussnain
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Ali
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical Engineering, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Texas 75080, USA.
authors.forename: John H L
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Hansen
authors.affiliation: School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Texas 75080, USA.
authors.forename: Emily
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Tobey
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D003054:Cochlear Implants; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*; D013063:Speech Discrimination Tests; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*