Vocal Emotion Communication With Cochlear Implants

Using novel methodologies and stimuli comprising both controlled laboratory recordings and materials culled from databases of ecologically valid speech emotions (e.g., from publicly available podcasts), the team aims to collect perceptual data to build a statistical model to test the hypothesis that experience-based changes in emotion identification by pediatric and adult CI recipients is mediated by improvements in cue-optimization.

The team will acoustically analyze vocal emotion productions by participants, quantify acoustic features of spoken emotions, and obtain behavioral measures of how well normally hearing listeners can identify those emotions.