The effect of intensity on pitch in electric hearing and its relationship to the speech perception performance of cochlear implantees

Abstract

This study investigated the effect of intensity on pitch in electric hearing and its relationship to the speech perception ability of cochlear implantees. Subjects were 13 adult users of the Nucleus 22 cochlear implant system, using either the Spectra22 or ESPrit22 speech processor and the SPEAK speech processing strategy. A multidimensional scaling technique was employed. Speech perception was measured using sentences and vowels. All measurements were performed in a soundfield condition, and subjects wore their own speech processors with their normally used settings. Results showed a significant correlation between the degree of deviation of the subjects'stimulus spaces from the "ideal" spa..