The aim of this study was to assess the problems and needs of families with cochlear implanted children during implantation process. The goals of study was: 1. to traverse function peculiarities of families with cochlear implanted children in teoretical aspect; 2. to assess what problems theese families have during implantation process; 3. to assess wich needs are important for families during implantation process; 4. to assess what is parents opinion about implantation process; 5. to project nurse possibilities of action during cohlear implantation process. Methods: Was send special questionnaires to families with cochlear implanted children, and got 20 families answers (from 20 mothers and 19 fathers). It means, 67%. Additionally was make interview with specialists of cochlear implantation. Results: For all parents was the most important to get all information about their children health, cochlear implantation process and rehabilitation after implantation. The most parents agreed that the implantation process made influence to family material and emotional well-being. The interview with specialists of cochlear implantation results predicable the got results. Conclusions: 1. Cochlear implantation process made influence to the behaviour of families with cochlear implanted children. 2. some families hade problems take care with other members of family during implantation process. 3. the information about implantation process made the most influence to emotional needs of... [to full text]

Everyday speech perception frequently occurs in degraded listening conditions, against a background of noise, interruptions and intermingling voices. Despite these challenges, speech perception is remarkably successful, due in part to perceptual learning. Previous research has demonstrated more rapid perceptual learning of acoustically-degraded speech when listeners are given the opportunity to map the linguistic content of utterances, presented in clear auditory form, onto the degraded auditory utterance. Here, I investigate whether learning is further enhanced by the provision of naturalistic facial gestural information, presented concurrently with either the clear auditory sentence (Experiment I), or with the degraded utterance (Experiment II). Recorded materials were noise-vocoded (4 frequency channels; 50- 8000 Hz). Noise-vocoding (NV) is a popular simulation of speech transduced through a cochlear implant, and 4-channel NV speech is difficult for naïve listeners to understand, but can be learned over several sentences of practice. In Experiment I, each trial began with an auditory-alone presentation of a degraded stimulus for report (D). In two conditions, this was followed by passive listening to either the clear spoken form and then the degraded form again (condition DCD), or the reverse (DDC); the former format of presentation (DCD) results in more efficient learning (Davis et al, 2005). Condition DCvD was similar to DCD, except that the clear spoken form was accompanied by facial gestural information (a talking face). The results indicate that presenting clear audiovisual feedback (DCvD) does not confer any advantage over clear auditory feedback (DCD). In Experiment II, two groups received a degraded sentence presentation with corresponding facial movements (Dv); the second group also received a second degraded (auditory-alone) presentation (DvD). Two control conditions and a baseline DCvD condition were also tested. Although they never received clear speech feedback, performance in the DvD group was significantly greater than in all others, indicating that perceptual learning mechanisms can capitalize on visual concomitants of speech. The DvD group outperformed the Dv group, suggesting that the second degraded presentation in the DvD condition further facilitates generalization of learning. These findings have important implications for improving comprehension of speech in an unfamiliar accent or following cochlear implantation. / Thesis (Master, Psychology) -- Queen's University, 2011-09-01 16:50:58.923

No description available.

<p>Cochlear implant listeners are presented with a time and frequency-quantized version of speech signals. In the frequency domain, resolution is limited by the number of electrodes in each listener's array. Current cochlear implant speech processing strategies implicitly assume that the information presented to each one of these electrodes is perceived as unique and independent. However, previous research suggests that stimuli presented on different electrodes can be indiscriminable (e.g. Zwolan et al., 1997; Throckmorton and Collins, 1999; Henry et al., 2000) . Additional studies suggest that stimuli presented on one electrode can influence the perception of stimuli on neighboring electrodes (e.g. Shannon, 1990; Chatterjee and Shannon, 1998; Boëx et al., 2003). Removing this redundant or occluded information could cause more distinct or perceivable information to be presented to the listener and possibly result in improved speech recognition.</p><p>Previous studies have used psychophysical data to identify the electrodes with the highest potential to confound speech recognition (Zwolan et al., 1997, Boëx et al., 2003, and Garadat et al., 2012). In order to minimize electrode interactions and maximize the amount of perceivable information, each of these studies used a single psychophysical metric to deactivate the electrodes across all time windows of the speech processing strategy. For some listeners, these reduced electrode sets resulted in improved speech recognition over using the of the electrodes in their array. These studies did not compare the results of using different psychophysical metrics to exclude electrodes for a group of listeners nor did they investigate speech recognition performance as a function of the number of electrodes excluded from the array.</p><p>In this work, three different psychophysical metrics were used to obtain a multidimensional estimate of the potential "usefulness'' of each electrode. These results were then used to inform two different methods of psychophysics-motivated electrode selection. The first method incorporated individual data into each listener's energy-driven speech processing strategy. For each time window, the electrodes with the highest energy that were also most likely to be perceived, according to the psychophysical data, were selected for stimulation. The second method sequentially excluded the electrodes with the highest potential to confound from the array across all time windows, resulting in a group of psychophysics-motivated electrode sets for each metric. Evaluating each of these electrode sets exhaustively would require a prohibitive amount of experimental time. To mitigate this problem, an adaptive procedure was developed to estimate performance as a function of cochlear implant parameters in a time-efficient manner. For each metric, the procedure estimated the set with the highest estimated probability of correct phoneme identification. Listeners' speech recognition performance using this electrode set was then compared to their performance using their full electrode array. For both electrode selection methods, listeners' speech recognition scores were generally comparable to those obtained in the clinical condition. This finding supports the hypothesis that listeners were not perceiving all the information presented to them using their clinical speech processing strategy and their complete set of electrodes. Additionally, these results suggest that improvements to the proposed electrode selection strategies should be in investigated in order to increase the amount of perceivable information presented to cochlear implant listeners.</p> / Dissertation

This study explores the effects of manipulating vocal loudness and speech rate on voice onset time (VOT) in normal hearing children and two children with cochlear implants (CIs). 15 normal hearing participants and two participants with CIs produced all six stop consonants in the phrase “It’s a Cod again” while speaking normally, softly, loudly, slowly, and quickly. Consonants were grouped into voiced and voiceless categories for comparison. Results indicated that the group of normal hearing children produced longer VOTs for voiceless stops than voiced across all conditions. When speaking loudly or quickly, VOT values were shorter than at normal levels. When speaking softly or slowly, VOT values were longer than at normal levels. The two children with CIs performed in a similar manner to the normal hearing group; however, VOTs produced by the six-year old participant were consistently longer than those of the normal hearing group across all conditions. / Speech-Language Pathology

The cochlear nucleus (CN), as the first brain centre in the auditory system is responsible for sorting the neural signals received from the cochlea, into parallel processing streams for transmission to the assorted higher auditory nuclei. A commissural connection formed between cochlear nuclei through direct projections, thereby provides the first site in the central auditory system at which binaural information is able to influence the ascending auditory signal. This thesis investigates the nature of commissural projections and the impact of their input upon neurons of the ventral CN (VCN) through in vivo intracellular and extracellular electrophysiological recordings together with both acoustic and electrical stimulation of the contralateral CN.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / An in-depth, longitudinal study of the speech and oral language development of eight infants with a profound hearing loss who receive early interventions focused on developing their auditory, speech and oral language capacity is presented in this thesis. Infants were tracked for two years, during the period when they are changed from a hearing aid to a cochlear implant. All infants in this study had their hearing loss identified early and were fitted with hearing aids between 1 and 7 months of age and received their cochlear implant between 8 and 16 months of age. They attended a number of different auditory-verbal early intervention programs (depending on where they lived) all of which focused on developing speech and language skills through listening. Attendance at their particular early intervention program at least once a week was in addition to weekly attendance the Sydney Cochlear Implant Centre for therapy and audiological services. A broad range of measures has been used to track the infants’ acquisition of oral language skills, including measures of communicative intention, pre-speech and speech development, and oral language development. Despite a wide range of individual differences across the group of infants, the results suggest some general trends. In the area of communicative intent most infants followed typical development patterns in terms of both the types (e.g. requesting, answering etc) and forms (gestural, vocal, verbal) used, but they showed delays in their frequency of usage of these types and forms. For speech development the infants demonstrated typical speech skills by 18-months post-cochlear implantation in the areas of consonant inventories, severity of phonological involvement (speech intelligibility) and phonological process development, but they showed delays in vowel and consonant acquisition. Finally, for language development the infants were delayed relative to typical development at 18 months post-implantation. The findings support and extend previous studies which have demonstrated the benefits of early intervention for communication development in infants with hearing loss (Calderon & Naidu, 2000; Mayne, Yoshinaga-Itano & Sedey, 2000; Moeller, 2000; Yoshinaga-Itano & Apuzzo, 1998). However, the delays in the oral communication skills of the infants in the current study suggest that more intensive long-term intervention is required if the infants are to attain typical oral speech and language development. The findings capture the complexity of early oral language development, which has been lacking in previous studies of infants with significant hearing loss, receiving a cochlear implant (Dettman, Briggs, & Dowell, 2005; Houston, Ying, Pisoni, & Iler Kirk, 2003; Schauwers, Gillis, Daemers, De Beukelaer, & Govaerts, 2004). The present data also provide some limited support for earlier implantation, that is, before 12 months of age, as the infants made little progress in oral language development while using hearing aids. The reduced amount of auditory signal available to them prior to implantation may be the determining factor in their inability to follow typical rates and patterns of development. However, rates of development with the implant were not straightforward and further research on this population is needed. Universal neonatal screening programs for hearing loss will potentially provide a larger population of early identified infant for future research. This will create the opportunity for large scale, prospective, longitudinal, studies examining the acquisition of speech and oral language development. Limitations of this study, tracking the early stages of speech and language development over a two year period are identified. Future studies are needed to follow the infants for a longer time to determine if their rate of development is sufficient for them to catch up in areas of delay and maintain their performance in areas where they match their typically developing peers.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 59-64).

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Texas at El Paso, 2007. / Title from title screen. Vita. CD-ROM. Includes bibliographical references. Also available online.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1988. / Vita. Bibliography: leaves [88]-96.