Voice pitch cues in speech intelligibility, prosody, and memory consolidation, for cochlear implant users

Cochlear implants are surgical devices that allow deaf people to recover some form of hearing and understand speech. However, current devices are limited, particularly in terms of their ability to transmit voice pitch information. Users have to compensate for these limitations by spending additional resources to decode words, fill-in the gaps, and extract linguistic and semantic meaning as well as the speaker’s emotional state and intent. Over time, this effort results in fatigue and cognitive saturation, which are incredibly taxing on the mind, even in daily tasks. We wish to alleviate some of these difficulties by validating a battery of test sensitive to the cognitive burden of these pitch limitations and put to the test a new processing strategy developed by Oticon to transmit finer pitch cues.

Faculty Supervisor:

Mickael Deroche;Alexandre Lehmann

Student:

Anastasia SARES

Partner:

Oticon Canada

Discipline:

Psychology

Sector:

Manufacturing

University:

Program: