Evaluation of the Nucleus Spectra 22 Processor and New Speech Processing Strategy (SPEAK) in Postlinguistically Deafened Adults

Abstract

A new speech processing strategy (SPEAK) has been compared with the previous Multipeak (MPEAK) strategy in a study with 24 postlinguistically deafened adults. The results show that performance with the SPEAK coding strategy was significantly better for 58.3% of subjects on closed-set consonant identification, for 33.3%) of subjects on closed-set vowel identification and open-set monosyllabic word recognition, and for 81.8%) of subjects on open-set sentence recognition in quiet and in competing noise (+ 10dB signal-to-noise ratio). By far the largest improvement observed was for sentence recognition in noise, with the mean score across subjects for the SPEAK strategy twice that obtained with MPEAK.

Key Words:

• multi-channel cochlear implants
• postlinguistically deaf adults
• speech processing