Perception of synthetic vowels by cochlear implant recipients

Adult recipients of cochlear implants (Nucleus and Clarion) provided identifications and confidence ratings for two sets of 465 vowel‐like tokens which were synthesized with two fundamental frequency (F0) contours representative of a typical male voice and female voice. Formant combinations used for the stimulus sets sampled a large range encompassing all nonretroflex vowels of American English. Subjects assigned each token to one of ten American English vowel qualities or to a category indicating it was not one of the ten, and rated their confidence of identification on a five‐point scale. Various perceptual maps were constructed from these responses based on number of agreements per token, most often used ID category per token, and average ratings. These maps will be compared with similar maps derived from normal hearing subjects. Comparison and discussion will address general differences in perceptual vowel spaces and rating patterns between the subject groups, as well as specific differences related t...