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

听力正常和植入人工耳蜗的儿童的音调处理

• 批准号: 8176634
• 负责人: Monita Chatterjee
• 金额: $ 3.17万
• 依托单位: UNIV OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-07-11 至 2012-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8176634
• 关键词: 16 year old; 6 year old; 7 year old; Acoustic Stimulation; Acoustics; Address; Adolescence; Adult; Age; Area; Auditory system; Brain; Child; Cochlear Implants; Cochlear implant procedure; Complement; Complex; Cues; Development; Devices; Disadvantaged; Discrimination; Electric Stimulation; Emotional; Frequencies; Goals; Hearing; Hearing Impaired Persons; Human; Implant; Infant; Knowledge; Laboratories; Language; Language Development; Life; Light; Linguistics; Literature; Measures; Neuronal Plasticity; Pattern; Perception; Performance; Predictive Factor; Process; Prosthesis; Psychometrics; Psychophysiology; Reliance; Resolution; School-Age Population; Shapes; Speech; Staging; Stimulus; Taiwan; Testing; Variant; Voice; Weight; Yang; base; cohort; critical period; hearing impairment; implantation; improved; indexing; infancy; knowledge base; lexical; oral communication; research study; speech processing; young adult

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. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The natural variations of voice pitch in everyday speech convey important linguistic information and are particularly important for language-learning by young infants and children. Little is known about young children's sensitivity to voice pitch, and children with profound hearing loss who have received a cochlear implant are at a particular disadvantage in regard to voice pitch information. The results of the present study will shed light on basic mechanisms of voice pitch processing by normally-hearing and cochlear-implanted children as they develop from age 6 to young adulthood.

描述（由申请人提供）：口语音调的自然变化向听者传达重要的语言和情感信息。特别是对于儿童来说，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，对于年幼的孩子来说，在他们学习母语的最初几年，能够听到音调的细微差异是非常重要的。然而，人们对儿童对音高细微变化的敏感性知之甚少。今天，出生时耳聋或在生命早期失去听力的儿童通常会接受人工耳蜗植入。尽管人工耳蜗植入物很好地促进了口语的感知和习得，但它们在可以传输给听者的音高信息量方面受到限制。然而，早期植入的幼儿大脑仍然有可能比成人的大脑更具适应性，在某种程度上可以克服该设备的局限性。该项目的目标是：i）测量学龄正常听力和耳蜗植入儿童对音高变化的心理物理敏感性; ii）量化儿童在音高降低时使用不同声学线索处理语音语调和词汇音调的能力; iii）量化耳蜗植入儿童在类似任务中的表现。这些研究的结果将为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重要限制提供重要的新见解。 公共卫生相关性：日常讲话中音高的自然变化传达了重要的语言信息，对幼儿和儿童的语言学习特别重要。关于幼儿对语音音高的敏感性知之甚少，而接受人工耳蜗植入的重度听力损失儿童在语音音高信息方面处于特别不利的地位。本研究的结果将阐明正常听力和耳蜗植入儿童从6岁到成年早期的音高处理的基本机制。