Voice Pitch Processing By Normally-Hearing and Cochlear-Implanted Children

描述（由申请人提供）：说话音调的自然变化向听者传递重要的语言和情感信息。尤其是对儿童来说，这些韵律线索在语言学习的早期阶段至关重要。在声调语言中，音高的快速变化带有词汇意义。因此，对于幼儿来说，在他们学习母语的早期阶段，听到音高细微差别的能力是非常重要的。然而，人们对儿童对音高细微变化的敏感性知之甚少。今天，天生失聪或早年失聪的儿童通常会接受人工耳蜗植入。虽然人工耳蜗能很好地促进口语的感知和习得，但它们能传递给听者的音高信息数量有限。然而，早期植入儿童大脑的可能性仍然存在，因为儿童的大脑比成人的大脑适应能力更强，因此在一定程度上可以克服设备的局限性。这个项目的目标是：i)测量学龄正常听力儿童和耳蜗植入儿童对音高变化的心理物理敏感性；Ii)量化儿童在声调降低时使用不同的声音线索处理语音语调和词汇语调的能力；Iii)量化人工耳蜗植入儿童在类似任务中的表现。这些研究的结果将对幼儿对音高线索的敏感性，人工耳蜗植入如何影响这种敏感性，以及早期植入的听觉系统在多大程度上可以克服假体的一个重要限制提供重要的新见解。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Natural variations in the pitch of spoken utterances convey important linguistic and emotional information to the listener. For children in particular, these prosodic cues are critical in the early stages of language learning. In tonal languages, the rapid changes in pitch carry lexical meaning. For young children, therefore, the ability to hear subtle differences in voice pitch is of great importance during the early years as they acquire their native language. Little, however, is known about children's sensitivity to subtle changes in voice pitch. Today, children who were born deaf or lost their hearing early in life routinely receive cochlear implants. Although cochlear implants facilitate the perception and acquisition of spoken language well, they are limited in the amount of voice pitch information that can be transmitted to the listener. It is, however, still possible that the early-implanted brain of young children, which is more adaptive than that of adults, may be able to overcome the limitations of the device to some extent. The goals of this project are to: i) measure the psychophysical sensitivity of school-aged normally hearing and cochlear-implanted children to changes in voice pitch; ii) quantify children's ability to process speech intonation and lexical tones using different acoustic cues when voice pitch is degraded; iii) quantify cochlear-implanted children's performance in similar tasks. The results of these studies will shed important new light on young children's sensitivity to voice pitch cues, how cochlear implantation might influence this sensitivity, and the extent to which the early-implanted auditory system can overcome an important limitation of the prosthesis.