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

描述(申请人提供)：发音的自然变化向听者传达了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是至关重要的。在声调语言中，音高的快速变化具有词汇意义。因此，对于年幼的孩子来说，在他们获得母语的早期阶段，能够听到音调上的细微差别是非常重要的。然而，人们对儿童对音调细微变化的敏感度知之甚少。如今，天生耳聋或早年失聪的儿童通常会接受人工耳蜗术。虽然人工耳蜗术很好地促进了人们对口语的感知和习得，但它们能够传递给听者的音调信息量是有限的。然而，幼儿早期植入的大脑比成年人更具适应性，仍有可能在一定程度上克服该设备的局限性。该项目的目标是：i)测量听力正常的学龄儿童和植入人工耳蜗的儿童对音调变化的心理物理敏感性；ii)量化儿童在音调下降时使用不同声学线索处理语音语调和词汇音调的能力；iii)量化植入人工耳蜗的儿童在类似任务中的表现。这些研究的结果将为以下问题提供重要的新线索：幼儿对音调提示的敏感度，人工耳蜗植入如何影响这种敏感度，以及早期植入的听觉系统可以在多大程度上克服假体的一个重要限制。

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.