Prosody perception and musical pitch discrimination in adults using cochlear implants

Objectives: This study investigated prosodic perception and musical pitch discrimination in adults using cochlear implants (CI), and examined the relationship between prosody perception scores and non-linguistic auditory measures, demographic variables, and speech recognition scores. Design: Participants were given four subtests of the PEPS-C (profiling elements of prosody in speech-communication), the adult paralanguage subtest of the DANVA 2 (diagnostic analysis of non verbal accuracy 2), and the contour and interval subtests of the MBEA (Montreal battery of evaluation of amusia). Study sample: Twelve CI users aged 25;5 to 78;0 years participated. Results: CI participants performed significantly more poorly than normative values for New Zealand adults for PEPS-C turn-end, affect, and contrastive stress reception subtests, but were not different from the norm for the chunking reception subtest. Performance on the DANVA 2 adult paralanguage subtest was lower than the normative mean reported by Saindon (2010) Saindon M.R. 2010. Music Processing in Deaf Adults with Cochlear Implants. Master's thesis. University of Toronto. Available: https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/25790/6/Saindon_Mathieu_R_201011_MA_thesis.pdf [Google Scholar]. Most of the CI participants performed at chance level on both MBEA subtests. Conclusion: CI users have difficulty perceiving prosodic information accurately. Difficulty in understanding different aspects of prosody and music may be associated with reduced pitch perception ability.