Post-lingual deaf adult cochlear implant users' speech and voice characteristics: cochlear implant turned-on versus turned-off

Abstract

Background

A time-period of turning off cochlear implant (CI) might affect the speech and voice features of the CI users due to loss of auditory feedback monitoring.

Objectives

To evaluate Persian-speaking CI users' speech and voice parameters in a device-on/off experiment.

Material and methods

Forty-eight Persian-speaking adults with post-linguistic deafness who had received a unilateral CI and 50 normally-hearing counterparts were recruited. All CI users had to fulfill three phases of speech sampling, including the device-on, device-off (a 5-hourly period), and once again device-on phase. Their Fundamental frequency, Jitter, Shimmer, Harmonics-to-noise ratio, hyper-nasality score, and the percentage of speech intelligibility were assessed for both groups.

Results

The findings revealed that the CI-on/off conditions significantly changed cochlear implanted participants' F0, Shimmer, HNR, and hyper-nasality values. However, no statistical differences were observed in Jitter and the percentage of speech intelligibility between the CI and control groups.

Conclusions

A short-term auditory deprivation in CI recipients could degrade the speech and voice quality in CI users, so that could change the quality of their speech resonance into hyper-nasality. However, when the CIs were turned on again, the quality of their speech and voice returned to normal-sounding.

Chinese abstract

背景：关闭耳蜗植入体（CI）的时段可能会由于失去听觉反馈调控而影响CI使用者的语音和声音特征。

目的：评估波斯语CI使用者在设备开启/关闭实验中的语音和语音参数。

材料和方法：招聘了48名植入单侧CI的讲波斯语的患有语言后耳聋的成年人和50名听力正常者。所有CI使用者都必须满足语音采样的三个阶段, 包括设备开启、设备关闭（5个小时）和设备再次启动。评估了两组的基本频率、抖动、微光、谐噪比、重鼻音评分和语音清晰度。

结果：研究结果表明, CI开启 / 关闭的状态显著改变了植入人工耳蜗参与者的F0、微光, HNR和重鼻音值。但是, 在CI组和对照组之间没有观察到抖动和语音清晰度百分比的统计学差异。

结论：CI植入者的短期听觉失去可能会降低言语和声音质量, 从而可能将他们的语音共振质量转变为鼻音过重。但是, 再次打开CI时, 其言语和声音质量恢复正常。

Keywords:

• Post-lingual deafness
• cochlear implant
• auditory feedback

Acknowledgments

We are thankful to all our participants for their cooperation in this study.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.

Additional information

Funding

This project was supported by the Research Deputy at Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz, Iran (Registration number: HRC-9812).