title: Normal-Hearing Listeners' and Cochlear Implant Users' Perception of Pitch Cues in Emotional Speech.
abstract: In cochlear implants (CIs), acoustic speech cues, especially for pitch, are delivered in a degraded form. This study's aim is to assess whether due to degraded pitch cues, normal-hearing listeners and CI users employ different perceptual strategies to recognize vocal emotions, and, if so, how these differ. Voice actors were recorded pronouncing a nonce word in four different emotions: anger, sadness, joy, and relief. These recordings' pitch cues were phonetically analyzed. The recordings were used to test 20 normal-hearing listeners' and 20 CI users' emotion recognition. In congruence with previous studies, high-arousal emotions had a higher mean pitch, wider pitch range, and more dominant pitches than low-arousal emotions. Regarding pitch, speakers did not differentiate emotions based on valence but on arousal. Normal-hearing listeners outperformed CI users in emotion recognition, even when presented with CI simulated stimuli. However, only normal-hearing listeners recognized one particular actor's emotions worse than the other actors'. The groups behaved differently when presented with similar input, showing that they had to employ differing strategies. Considering the respective speaker's deviating pronunciation, it appears that for normal-hearing listeners, mean pitch is a more salient cue than pitch range, whereas CI users are biased toward pitch range cues.
authors.affiliation: Center for Language and Cognition Groningen, Department of Applied Linguistics, University of Groningen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Steven
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Gilbers
authors.affiliation: Department of Otorhinolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery, University Medical Center Groningen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Christina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Fuller
authors.affiliation: Center for Language and Cognition Groningen, Department of Dutch, University of Groningen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Dicky
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Gilbers
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands; Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Mirjam
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Broersma
authors.affiliation: Department of Communication and Information Sciences, University of Tilburg, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Martijn
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Goudbeek
authors.affiliation: Department of Otorhinolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery, University Medical Center, Groningen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Rolien
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Free
authors.affiliation: Department of Otorhinolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery, University Medical Center, Groningen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Deniz
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Başkent
keywords: acoustic emotion cues; cochlear implant; cue ranking; emotion recognition; force of articulation