Abstract
Musical enjoyment for cochlear implant (CI) recipients is often reported to be unsatisfactory. Our goal was to determine
whether the musical experience of postlingually deafened adult CI recipients could be enriched by presenting the bass and
treble clef parts of short polyphonic piano pieces separately to each ear (dichotic). Dichotic presentation should artificially
enhance the lateralization cues of each part and help the listeners to better segregate them and thus provide greater clarity.
We also hypothesized that perception of the intended emotion of the pieces and their overall enjoyment would be enhanced
in the dichotic mode compared with the monophonic (both parts in the same ear) and the diotic mode (both parts in both
ears). Twenty-eight piano pieces specifically composed to induce sad or happy emotions were selected. The tempo of the
pieces, which ranged from lento to presto covaried with the intended emotion (from sad to happy). Thirty participants
(11 normal-hearing listeners, 11 bimodal CI and hearing-aid users, and 8 bilaterally implanted CI users) participated in this
study. Participants were asked to rate the perceived clarity, the intended emotion, and their preference of each piece in
different listening modes. Results indicated that dichotic presentation produced small significant improvements in subjective
ratings based on perceived clarity. We also found that preference and clarity ratings were significantly higher for pieces with
fast tempi compared with slow tempi. However, no significant differences between diotic and dichotic presentation were
found for the participants’ preference ratings, or their judgments of intended emotion.
Original language | English |
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Journal | Trends in Hearing |
Volume | 19 |
Number of pages | 10 |
ISSN | 2331-2165 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2015 |
Bibliographical note
Copyright: The Author(s) 2015Keywords
- Cochlear implant
- Music perception
- Emotions
- Auditory scene analysis