Tone acquisition in young children with cochlear implants

描述(申请人提供)：人工耳蜗已帮助数千名严重感音神经性耳聋患者获得听力和语音识别。然而，在目前的人工耳蜗设计中，复杂声音的基音信息是有限的。这给会说普通话等声调语言的患者带来了特殊的挑战。本研究的目的是使用前瞻性的纵向研究设计，调查越来越多的说普通话的儿童植入人工耳蜗术后的声调习得。由于目前关于普通话声调习得的规范性数据很少，我们将首先建立一个数据库，将人工耳蜗术后儿童的声调习得数据与之进行比对。在拟议研究的具体目标1中，30名听力正常、母语为普通话的儿童将在6个月大时被招募，并进行跟踪调查，直到3岁。语音样本将在2.5年期间每隔4-6周记录一次。具体目标2选择30名1~18岁母语为普通话的人工耳蜗术后儿童，在激活后6个月~3年每隔4~6周记录一次语音样本。两组受试者都将从北京招收中国。录制的语音材料将受到我们之前开发的声学、神经网络和感知分析的影响。声学分析将集中于语音令牌的基频(F0)，特别是起始值和偏移值。神经网络分析将被用来提供音调产生精度的客观测量。由听力正常、以普通话为母语的成年人(N=10)对儿童产生的音节进行声调识别的知觉测试将提供声调产生准确性的主观测量。为了构建声调习得的发展轨迹，对于听力正常的儿童，声调产生的纵向结果测量将被绘制为年龄的函数，或者对于植入人工耳蜗的儿童，声调产生的纵向结果测量将被绘制为年龄的函数。将进行多元回归分析，以确定植入时的年龄和植入物使用时间与音调产生指标的任何关联。虽然这项研究主要是关于词汇声调的产生，但它对非声调语言的使用者也有重要的启示。更好地表示音调信息将有助于识别和分离多个说话者，并为人工耳蜗用户提供音乐感知。因此，提出的研究可以提高许多人工耳蜗者的生活质量。与公共健康相关的人工耳蜗为严重听力损失的患者提供了良好的语音识别，但无法向用户提供音调信息。这项拟议的研究将对接受人工耳蜗术的语前聋儿童的音调产生进行纵向评估，并将确定在音调信息不足的情况下音调是如何发展的。本研究将促进我们对声调发育的认识，促进人工耳蜗者的康复。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Cochlear implant has helped thousands of patients with profound sensorineural hearing loss to gain hearing and speech recognition. In current designs of cochlear implants, however, pitch information of complex sounds is limited. This imposes a special challenge for patients who speak tone languages, such as Mandarin Chinese. The purpose of the proposed study is to investigate tone acquisition in the increasing number of Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants using a prospective, longitudinal research design. Since there are only scarce normative data on Mandarin tone acquisition, we will first establish a database to which the tone acquisition data from children with cochlear implants can be compared. In Specific Aim 1 of the proposed study, 30 normal-hearing, native Mandarin-speaking children will be recruited at age of 6 months and followed up till 3 years of age. The speech samples will be recorded at intervals of 4 - 6 weeks in the period of 2.5 years. In Specific Aim 2, 30 native Mandarin-speaking children (1 - 18 years old) with cochlear implants will be recruited and the speech samples will be recorded at intervals of 4 - 6 weeks from 6 months to 3 years after activation. Both groups of subjects will be recruited from Beijing, China. The recorded speech materials will be subject to acoustic, neural-network, and perceptual analyses that we developed previously. The acoustic analysis will focus on the fundamental frequencies (F0) of the speech tokens, especially the onset and offset F0 values. The neural network analysis will be used to provide an objective measure of tone production accuracy. The perceptual tests in which normal-hearing, native Mandarin-speaking adults (N= 10) will perform tone recognition on the syllables produced by the children will provide a subjective measure of tone production accuracy. To construct the developmental trajectories of tone acquisition, the longitudinal outcome measures of tone production will be plotted as a function of age for the normal-hearing children or duration of implant use for the children with cochlear implants. Multiple regression analyses will be performed to identify any associations of age at implantation and duration of implant use with the tone production measures. Although the proposed study is primarily concerned with lexical tone production, it has important implications for speakers of non-tonal languages. A better representation of pitch information would be useful in identifying and separating multiple talkers and providing music perception for cochlear-implant users. Therefore, the proposed study could improve quality of life for many cochlear implant users. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE Cochlear implants provide good speech recognition to patients with profound hearing loss but fail to deliver pitch information to the users. The proposed study will carry out a longitudinal evaluation of tone production in prelingually-deaf children who have received cochlear implants and will determine how tone develops with such insufficient pitch information. This research will advance our knowledge of tone development and enhance rehabilitation of cochlear implant users.