TY - JOUR
T1 - Bimodal benefits revealed by categorical perception of lexical tones in mandarin-speaking kindergarteners with a cochlear implant and a contralateral hearing aid
AU - Zhang, Hao
AU - Zhang, Jing
AU - Peng, Gang
AU - Ding, Hongwei
AU - Zhang, Yang
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
PY - 2020/12
Y1 - 2020/12
N2 - Purpose: Pitch reception poses challenges for individuals with cochlear implants (CIs), and adding a hearing aid (HA) in the nonimplanted ear is potentially beneficial. The current study used fine-scale synthetic speech stimuli to investigate the bimodal benefit for lexical tone categorization in Mandarin-speaking kindergarteners using a CI and an HA in opposite ears. Method: The data were collected from 16 participants who were required to complete two classical tasks for speech categorical perception (CP) with CI + HA device condition and CI alone condition. Linear mixed-effects models were constructed to evaluate the identification and discrimination scores across different device conditions. Results: The bimodal kindergarteners showed CP for the continuum varying from Mandarin Tone 1 and Tone 2. Moreover, the additional acoustic information from the contralateral HA contributes to improved lexical tone categorization, with a steeper slope, a higher discrimination score of between-category stimuli pair, and an improved peakedness score (i.e., an increased benefit magnitude for discriminations of between-category over within-category pairs) for the CI + HA condition than the CI alone condition. The bimodal kindergarteners with better residual hearing thresholds at 250 Hz level in the nonimplanted ear could perceive lexical tones more categorically. Conclusion: The enhanced CP results with bimodal listening provide clear evidence for the clinical practice to fit a contralateral HA in the nonimplanted ear in kindergarteners with unilateral CIs with direct benefits from the low-frequency acoustic hearing.
AB - Purpose: Pitch reception poses challenges for individuals with cochlear implants (CIs), and adding a hearing aid (HA) in the nonimplanted ear is potentially beneficial. The current study used fine-scale synthetic speech stimuli to investigate the bimodal benefit for lexical tone categorization in Mandarin-speaking kindergarteners using a CI and an HA in opposite ears. Method: The data were collected from 16 participants who were required to complete two classical tasks for speech categorical perception (CP) with CI + HA device condition and CI alone condition. Linear mixed-effects models were constructed to evaluate the identification and discrimination scores across different device conditions. Results: The bimodal kindergarteners showed CP for the continuum varying from Mandarin Tone 1 and Tone 2. Moreover, the additional acoustic information from the contralateral HA contributes to improved lexical tone categorization, with a steeper slope, a higher discrimination score of between-category stimuli pair, and an improved peakedness score (i.e., an increased benefit magnitude for discriminations of between-category over within-category pairs) for the CI + HA condition than the CI alone condition. The bimodal kindergarteners with better residual hearing thresholds at 250 Hz level in the nonimplanted ear could perceive lexical tones more categorically. Conclusion: The enhanced CP results with bimodal listening provide clear evidence for the clinical practice to fit a contralateral HA in the nonimplanted ear in kindergarteners with unilateral CIs with direct benefits from the low-frequency acoustic hearing.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85097849661&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85097849661&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1044/2020_JSLHR-20-00224
DO - 10.1044/2020_JSLHR-20-00224
M3 - Article
C2 - 33186505
AN - SCOPUS:85097849661
SN - 1092-4388
VL - 63
SP - 4238
EP - 4251
JO - Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research
JF - Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research
IS - 12
ER -