Real-world tone development in children with cochlear implants

 描述(申请人提供)：人工耳蜗已使数千名严重感音神经性听力损失患者受益，提供了令人满意的言语感知。由于当前语音处理策略中编码的基音信息有限，音调感知和音乐感知对人工耳蜗用户来说仍然是一个挑战。对于说普通话等声调语言的患者来说，声调感知至关重要，因为声调在单音节水平上传达词汇意义。语前聋儿童的声调知觉和声调产生已经被研究了很多年，但在现实世界中还没有。这项拟议的研究旨在调查在现实世界中，越来越多的说普通话、植入人工耳蜗术的儿童的声调发展。这项研究的具体目标1涉及在噪声条件下普通话听力正常儿童和人工耳蜗术后儿童的词汇声调知觉。160名听力正常、母语为普通话的儿童和100名3至18岁植入人工耳蜗术后的语前聋儿童参加了在不同噪声类型(即稳态噪声、调幅噪声和多人讲话杂音噪声)下(即-6至+12分贝)进行的声调感知实验。另一组20名听力正常的成年人也将被招募作为对照组。在具体目标2中，将记录同一组儿童受试者(即听力正常的受试者和植入人工耳蜗的受试者)以及成年受试者产生的双音节汉语单词和自发产生的句子。录制的语音材料将受到我们之前开发的声学和神经网络分析的影响。声学分析将集中在语音样本的基频(F0)上。神经网络分析将被用来基于成人和年龄匹配的典型发育儿童的音调模式，为人工耳蜗术后儿童的音调产生准确性提供客观测量。将特别注意音节之间的声调模式的协同发音。将进行多元回归分析，以确定种植年龄和种植使用时间与噪声中的音调感知和单音节水平以上的音调产生准确性的任何关联。因此，这项拟议的研究代表了听力正常和植入人工耳蜗的儿童在现实世界中的音调发展。虽然这项研究主要关注词汇声调的发展，但它对非声调语言的说话者也有重要的启示，因为音高信息不仅用于音乐感知，也用于听觉流分离。因此，提出的研究可以帮助提高许多人工耳蜗者的生活质量。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Cochlear implant has benefited thousands of patients with profound sensorineural hearing loss by providing satisfactory speech perception. Due to limited pitch information encoded in current speech processing strategies, tone perception and music perception are still challenging to users of cochlear implants. For patients who speak tone languages, such as Mandarin Chinese, tone perception is critical because tones convey lexical meaning at monosyllable levels. Tone perception and tone production in prelingually-deafened children have been studied for many years but not in real-world situations. The purpose of the proposed study is to investigate tone development in the rapidly increasing number of Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants in real-world situations. Specific Aim 1 of the proposed study addresses lexical tone perception in noise conditions in both Mandarin-speaking normal-hearing children and children with cochlear implants. One-hundred sixty normal-hearing, native Mandarin-speaking children and 100 prelingually- deafened children with cochlear implants between 3 and 18 years of age will be recruited to participating in tone perception experiment conducted in various noise types (i.e., steady-state noise, amplitude-modulated noised, and multi-talker speech babble noise) at various signal-to-noise ratios (i.e., from -6 to +12 dB). Another group of 20 normal-hearing adults will also be recruited as controls. In Specific Aim 2, the same groups of children subjects (i.e., normal-hearing and those with cochlear implants) as well as adult subjects will be recorded producing a listed of disyllable Chinese words and spontaneous production of sentences. The recorded speech materials will be subject to acoustic and neural-network analysis that we developed previously. The acoustic analysis will focus on the fundamental frequencies (F0) of the speech samples. The neural network analysis will be used to provide an objective measure of tone production accuracy of the children with cochlear implants based on the tone patterns of the adults and age-matched, typical developing children. Special attention will be paid in coarticulation of the tone patterns between syllables. Multiple regression analyses will be performed to identify any associations of age at implantation and duration of implant use with the tone perception in noise and tone production accuracy beyond monosyllable levels. Therefore, the proposed study represents tone development in real-world situations in children with normal hearing and cochlear implants. Although the proposed study is primarily concerned with lexical tone development, it has important implications for speakers of non-tonal languages because pitch information is used in auditory stream segregation as well as in music perception. Therefore, the proposed study could help improve quality of life for many cochlear implant users.