engleski

Do cochlear implants provide spectral envelope cues for voice gender identification?

The spectral envelope of human speech contains information on gender of the speaker, reflecting differences in the vocal tract lengths of male and female. It is not clear whether cochlear implants (CI), which have reduced spectral resolution compared to unimpaired human hearing, are able to transmit spectral envelope cues from speech sounds and whether CI users can make effective use of them. A juvenile population of 41 CI users was tested using naturalistic short speech segments spoken by a variety of speakers. Stimulus output patterns of each CI device in response to vocalic /a/ segments of the speech items were also recorded and analyzed for the presence of spectral envelope cues. A majority of recorded CI devices preserved spectral envelope cues to voice gender, but subjects who were able to identify gender correctly did not appear to utilize spectral envelope information for gender identification. Future research will be required to show the possibility to train CI users to utilize spectral envelope information, and why they tend to not to use it in spite of daily exposure.

cochlear implant

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