Five perception experiments were conducted that investigated how the perceived prominence of F0 maxima in accented syllables in Dutch is affected by the variation of F0 minima that is supposed to relate to variation in global pitch range. The purpose of the first two experiments was to test the predictions of a model in which the reference line is directly given by an interpolation between observable F0 minima. The results showed that the model was inadequate, and confirmed earlier research suggesting that the reference line is calculated in a less direct way. The next three experiments investigated the role of the F0 of the unaccented portions of speech at the beginning ͑''onset''͒ and at the end ͑''offset''͒ of the contour, and show that only the ͑low͒ onset is used to calibrate the reference line. The results also suggest that longer onsets affect the abstract reference more than do shorter onsets.

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Cochlear implants are largely unable to encode voice pitch information, which hampers the perception of some prosodic cues, such as intonation. This study investigated whether children with a cochlear implant in one ear were better able to detect differences in intonation when a hearing aid was added in the other ear ("bimodal fitting"). Fourteen children with normal hearing and 19 children with bimodal fitting participated in two experiments. The first experiment assessed the just noticeable difference in F0, by presenting listeners with a naturally produced bisyllabic utterance with an artificially manipulated pitch accent. The second experiment assessed the ability to distinguish between questions and affirmations in Dutch words, again by using artificial manipulation of F0. For the implanted group, performance significantly improved in each experiment when the hearing aid was added. However, even with a hearing aid, the implanted group required exaggerated F0 excursions to perceive a pitch accent and to identify a question. These exaggerated excursions are close to the maximum excursions typically used by Dutch speakers. Nevertheless, the results of this study showed that compared to the implant only condition, bimodal fitting improved the perception of intonation.