The Role of Place Cues in Voluntary Stream Segregation for Cochlear Implant Users.
Andreu Paredes-Gallardo, Sara M K Madsen, Torsten Dau and 1 others
PMID 29347886WHAT IT FOUND
Cochlear implant users separated interleaved sounds better when the sounds came from electrodes farther apart and when the sequence was longer.
Shorter sequences did not benefit from place cues. This suggests separating sounds on purpose needs time and place information.
Key findings
01In Experiment 1, listeners were better at detecting the delayed sound when the target and distractor were eight electrodes apart in long sequences, but not in short sequences.
02Long sequences helped only when the target and distractor were eight electrodes apart; they did not help when separation was one electrode or in the no-distractor control.
03In Experiment 2, listeners required on average 2.8 electrodes of separation to outperform a model that assumed the sounds stayed fused, and individual requirements varied from one to eight electrodes.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
Only nine listeners were tested in Experiment 1 and six in Experiment 2, and performance varied widely between listeners, so this cannot guide treatment for an individual patient. The study used simple pulse-burst sounds and a delay-detection task, not speech or a realistic noisy room, so it does not show what happens in everyday listening. The task encouraged listeners to separate sounds on purpose; it did not measure whether this ability improves speech perception or communication. Current cochlear implant strategies may activate many electrodes at once, which can reduce the place information available to listeners. All listeners had no residual hearing in the implanted ear, and most were bilateral, so results may not apply to bimodal or residual-hearing users.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the electrode-separation result as evidence that this will help a cochlear implant user hear speech in noise. The study used simple pulse bursts and a delay-detection task, not speech, and only nine listeners in Experiment 1 and six in Experiment 2.