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Abstract
The present study addresses the effect of cochlear implantation on the voice fundamental frequency at which 20 post-lingually deafened Dutch subjects utter speech materials. All subjects received the Nucleus 22 cochlear implant (3 WSP and 17 MSP processors). Speech recordings were made pre-implantation and three and twelve months post-implantation with the implant switched on and off. The fundamental frequency (fo) was sampled while reading a text.
The pre-implantation results show that in some subjects, fo was too high compared with the range in fo of normally-hearing subjects. Post-implantation, with the implant switched on, we found that the abnormally high fo values pre-implantation changed toward the normative values.
In addition, post-implantation we found that the range over which fo varied within a subject while reading the text, the fo sway, decreased for most subjects who, pre-implantation, had their fo sway outside the normative ranges, the normative range being denned as the interval between the mean plus/minus one standard deviation of the fo sway found for normally-hearing subjects.
Voice fundamental frequency of post-lingually deafened adults is characterized by large interindividual variability in the pre-implantation fo values. This large interindividual variability is found also in the effect of cochlear implantation on fo.