Impressions of Cochlear Implant User Speech

How does speech quality affect what people think of CI users when they don't know they're deaf? 

This project examines the first impressions listeners make about deaf cochlear implant users' after hearing their voices for the first time. 

Cochlear implants (CI) provide sound to deaf recipients, but they don't transmit all the auditory information in the speech signal.  As young CI users grow up learning to understand and use speech, they may be hard to understand or their voices may not sound quite typical.

In one experiment, college students gave their first impressions about the personalities of young adult CI users and controls with typical hearing (TH) after hearing them read a few sentences. TH speakers were rated most positively, followed by highly-intelligible CI users, and then less-intelligible CI users, showing that intelligibility matters, but listeners can also perceive something different about CI users' voices, even when every word is intelligible. A second experiment found the same patterns, but listeners with more positive attitudes toward deafness rated the less-intelligible CI users more positively than listeners with negative attitudes rated them, suggesting that education about deafness and/or experience with deaf people could improve peers' judgments.  In a third experiment, hiring managers imagined the speakers were job applicants; they showed the same rating patterns, with those in white-collar and high-communication jobs rating highly-intelligible CI users more negatively than did managers for blue-collar or low-communication jobs, suggesting an unconscious bias or lack of knowledge that could affect CI users' employment options.
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Other experiments explore the acoustic features in CI users' samples that listeners identify as different from TH voices. 

See news and updates related to this and other cochlear implant projects.

Funding, Papers & Presentations

Funding:

• Auditory Peer Perception, Subaward on NIH-NIDCD grant R01-DC012778-07, PI Lisa Davidson, Washington University in St. Louis, 2022–24

​Papers & Presentations:

• Freeman, V. (2022). Employers’ speech-based first impressions of cochlear implant users. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 28(2), 246–253. https://doi.org/10.1093/deafed/enac038.
• Freeman, V. (2022, November). Employers’ judgments of cochlear implant users. Poster, American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), New Orleans, LA.
• Freeman, V. (2018). Attitudes toward deafness affect impressions of young adults with cochlear implants.  Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 23(4), 360-368. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/deafed/eny026.
• Freeman, V. (2018). Speech intelligibility and personality peer-ratings of young adults with cochlear implants. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 23(1), 41-49. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/deafed/enx033.
• Freeman, V. (2019, November). Speech intelligibility, deaf speech quality, and personality ratings. American Speech-Language-Hearing (ASHA) Convention, Orlando, FL.

Precursor:

• Freeman, V., Pisoni, D., Kronenberger, W. G., & Castellanos, I. (2017). Speech intelligibility and psychosocial functioning in deaf children and teens with cochlear implants.  Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 22278–289. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/deafed/enx001.

People & Related Work

Collaborators: 

• Lisa Davidson, Washington University in St. Louis
• Rosalie Uchanski, Washington University in St. Louis
• David Pisoni, Speech Research Lab, Indiana University
• Luis Hernandez, Speech Research Lab, Indiana University
• Bill Kronenberger, Indiana University Medicine​

Meet Student assistants here

Related work:

• Somewhat related to Speech Rate Matching

Student Corner

Data and materials:

• Audio clips of sentences read by prelingually deafened CI users implanted as children and age-matched controls with typical hearing (TH). Children age 3-8 (~30 each CI, TH) said 10 different BIT sentences at two annual time points; older kids (~50 each CI, TH) and young adults (~60 each CI, TH) read 36 McGarr sentences. (See articles above for details.)
• Intelligibility scores for each speaker and sentence clip; spreadsheets of what listeners' heard/typed, calculations
• Subjective rating responses from ~90 young adult judges (with response times) and ~70 employment managers in reaction to 8 CI and 4 TH young adult speakers 
• Personality, values, attitudes-toward-deafness questionnaire responses from 50 of the young adult judges; employer/industry info and deafness-attitude responses from managers; calculations relating these to rating behaviors
• BASC-2 scores for each child (see Freeman et al. 2017 above)

• New/ongoing: audio clips of sentences read by prelingually deafened adolescents age 12-17 with cochlear implants (~70) and age-matched peers (~40) from various US regions. Each read 36 McGarr sentences and one of three similar lists of 36 sentences.
• Coming soon: rating responses and intelligibility scores from adolescent listeners with TH. 

• Speaker and judge demographics, hearing/device history, experience with hearing loss, etc.
• Experiment files for running personality ratings using AppleScript or Qualtrics
• Personality, values, attitudes, and demographic questionnaires; flyers, consent, IRB forms, etc. (printable and in Qualtrics)
• See also the Student Corners in the Past Recruitments 

Project ideas:

• Create educational materials about deafness, cochlear implants, or the abilities of people with hearing loss for college students, grade school children or teachers, employers...
• Investigate acoustic features of the CI users' audio samples that make them stand out as different from TH samples
• See also the Student Corners in the Past Recruitments 

​Past recruitments:

• Voice Perception in Job Interviews
• Auditory First Impressions
• CI Voice Assessments​