Audiovisual Speech Recognition With a Cochlear Implant and Increased Perceptual and Cognitive Demands.
Anna R Tinnemore, Sandra Gordon-Salant, Matthew J Goupell
PMID 33054620WHAT IT FOUND
Cochlear implant users struggled more than matched normal-hearing listeners with accented speech, but visual distractions did not hurt either group.
Dividing attention with a secondary task reduced speech recognition for both. Executive control, not age, predicted better listening performance.
Key findings
01The detrimental effect of a moderate accent was significantly greater for CI listeners than for normal-hearing listeners presented with vocoded speech.
02Visual distractions alone did not affect speech recognition performance for either group, but adding a secondary visual task significantly decreased performance.
03Higher scores on a measure of executive control were associated with better speech recognition performance, while age was not a significant predictor.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study used a vocoder to simulate CI hearing in normal-hearing listeners, which may not perfectly replicate the specific distortions or benefits of actual CI processing. The visual distraction task (counting people) may have been too complex or engaging, potentially masking distraction effects seen in simpler studies. The sample size (20 per group) may have limited the statistical power to detect subtle age-related effects or smaller group differences. The normal-hearing listeners had to adapt to the vocoded speech quickly, which might not fully mirror the long-term auditory processing changes in CI users.
Declared interests
Funded by the National Institute on Aging. No conflicts of interest declared.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that visual distractions are irrelevant to CI users' daily listening struggles. This study found no effect for passive visual clutter, but dividing attention with a specific secondary task did hurt performance. The lack of distraction effect may be due to the high difficulty of the primary speech task, which forced listeners to focus intensely, or the specific nature of the visual stimuli used.