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Trends in Amplification, Vol. 11, No. 4, 301-315 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/1084713807305301

Vocal Emotion Recognition by Normal-Hearing Listeners and Cochlear Implant Users

Xin Luo, PhD

Department of Auditory Implants and Perception, House Ear Institute, Los Angeles, California, xluo{at}hei.org

Qian-Jie Fu, PhD

Department of Auditory Implants and Perception, House Ear Institute, Los Angeles, California

John J. Galvin, BA

Department of Auditory Implants and Perception, House Ear Institute, Los Angeles, California

The present study investigated the ability of normal-hearing listeners and cochlear implant users to recognize vocal emotions. Sentences were produced by 1 male and 1 female talker according to 5 target emotions: angry, anxious, happy, sad, and neutral. Overall amplitude differences between the stimuli were either preserved or normalized. In experiment 1, vocal emotion recognition was measured in normal-hearing and cochlear implant listeners; cochlear implant subjects were tested using their clinically assigned processors. When overall amplitude cues were preserved, normal-hearing listeners achieved near-perfect performance, whereas listeners with cochlear implant recognized less than half of the target emotions. Removing the overall amplitude cues significantly worsened mean normal-hearing and cochlear implant performance. In experiment 2, vocal emotion recognition was measured in listeners with cochlear implant as a function of the number of channels (from 1 to 8) and envelope filter cutoff frequency (50 vs 400 Hz) in experimental speech processors. In experiment 3, vocal emotion recognition was measured in normal-hearing listeners as a function of the number of channels (from 1 to 16) and envelope filter cutoff frequency (50 vs 500 Hz) in acoustic cochlear implant simulations. Results from experiments 2 and 3 showed that both cochlear implant and normal-hearing performance significantly improved as the number of channels or the envelope filter cutoff frequency was increased. The results suggest that spectral, temporal, and overall amplitude cues each contribute to vocal emotion recognition. The poorer cochlear implant performance is most likely attributable to the lack of salient pitch cues and the limited functional spectral resolution.

Key Words: vocal emotion • cochlear implant • normal hearing • spectral resolution • temporal resolution


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