Perception of coarticulation in listeners with cochlear implants and other spectrally degraded conditions

Hearing loss can lead to not only decreased overall word recognition, but also poor access to cues that help us identify words more quickly in context. One such cue is coarticulation, or the overlap of articulatory gestures in neighboring sounds, which is utilized by listeners to more quickly an upcoming word. This study measures benefit of coarticulation when the incoming speech signal is spectrally degraded, as with the use of a cochlear implant or other degradation. In a visual world eye-tracking paradigm, listeners looked to four pictures of named objects while listening to speech stimuli in which the vowel preceding a target word contained natural cooperating coarticulation cues, conflicting cues (for a different word), or neutral cues (no coarticulation). The benefit of coarticulation was measured as reduction of latency of eye movements elicited by the cooperating cue compared to neutral cues, or the increase in latency resulting from conflicting cues; both situations would show evidence of sensiti...