Harmony Perception in Prelingually Deaf, Juvenile Cochlear Implant Users

Abstract

Prelingually deaf children listening through cochlear implants (CIs) face severe limitations on their experience of music, since the hearing device degrades relevant details of the acoustic input. An important parameter of music is harmony, which conveys emotional as well as syntactic information. The present study addresses musical harmony in three psychoacoustic experiments in young, prelingually deaf CI listeners and normal-hearing (NH) peers. The discrimination and preference of typical musical chords were studied, as well as cadence sequences conveying musical syntax. The ability to discriminate chords depended on the hearing age of the CI listeners, and was less accurate than for the NH peers. The groups did not differ with respect to the preference of certain chord types. NH listeners were able to categorize cadences, and performance improved with age at testing. In contrast, CI listeners were largely unable to categorize cadences. This dissociation is in accordance with data found in postlingually deafened adults. Consequently, while musical harmony is available to a limited degree to CI listeners, they are unable to use harmony to interpret musical syntax.

Application of Patient Reported Outcome Measures in Cochlear Implant Patients: Implications for the Design of Specific Rehabilitation Programs

“…The bionic ear, the gold standard treatment for profound hearing loss [1], has improved the hearing functionality, communication skills, and social lives of millions of people around the world in the past decades [2,3]. Although cochlear implants (CIs) have been developed to enable a satisfying verbal communication [4,5], music experiences have remained in the background of research and technological development, and consequently, many CI users are dissatisfied by the music they listen to [6,7]. Despite this fact being widely known by clinicians and patients, a recent systematic review concluded that currently, no single test has been widely used, in a research or clinical context, to assess music experience after cochlear implantation [8,9].…”

Music Perception Testing Reveals Advantages and Continued Challenges for Children Using Bilateral Cochlear Implants

“…Children with CIs perform even more poorly on music perception and recognition tests than adult CI users (Jung et al, 2012) but their ratings of musical enjoyment can be high nonetheless (Drennan et al, 2015). Children are better able to hear changes in rhythm than aspects of music which require spectral resolution [e.g., scale, contour, or interval (Hopyan et al, 2012) or harmony (Zimmer et al, 2019)]. Music perception is slightly better in those children who had some residual hearing during the period prior to implantation (Hopyan et al, 2012).…”

Vocal and musical emotion perception, voice cue discrimination, and quality of life in cochlear implant users with and without acoustic hearing

“…The perception of musical emotion remains challenging for CI users due to the limited transmission of spectrotemporal information (Caldwell et al, 2017; Giannantonio et al, 2015; Lassaletta et al, 2008; Limb, 2006). Behavioral studies have indicated that perception of cues related to pitch, timbre, harmony, and spectral resolution are limited in CI hearing (Friesen et al, 2001; McDermott, 2004; Shannon, 1983; Zimmer et al, 2019), while the perception of slow-varying temporal information and rhythm seems to be relatively preserved in comparison, though not always unimpaired (Hidalgo et al, 2021). Studies investigating emotion categorization in music have reported that CI users rely more strongly on temporal cues than on pitch cues.…”