Recognition of emotional prosody in cochlear implant users and self-assessment of their perception

Cochlear implants (CIs) have advanced significantly in recent years. Conventionally, the primary focus of treatment has traditionally been on speech comprehension. However, the perception of sound quality is now becoming increasingly important. One possible model for sound quality is emotional prosody. To date, however, there is a paucity of research on the potential for emotional prosody perception in CI users. Therefore, it was in general necessary to determine the extent to which CI users possess the capacity to perceive emotional prosody and allocate it to an emotional expression. Two cross-sectional studies were conducted with CI users. In the first study, a hearing test using emotionally spoken stimuli, the “Test of Emotional Prosody Perception” (TEPP) was performed. The second study used the German version of “Emotional Communication in Hearing Questionnaire” (EMO-CHeQ) to survey CI users’ perception of emotionally spoken language in their everyday lives. Both TEPP and EMO-CHeQ have been part of our clinical routine for many years. A total of 181 postlingually deaf CI users participated in the study for a short version of the TEPP. The test involved the participants using a touchscreen monitor to assign acoustic prosody stimuli to the intended emotional expression. On average, the number of correct assignments in the TEPP was above chance level, but there was a large spread. 161 CI users have been surveyed to date using EMO-CHeQ. Exploratory analyses of the EMO-CHeQ revealed a four-factor solution according to the English version of the EMO-CHeQ. It was shown that CI users suffering from single sided deafness (SSD) experienced fewer impairments than patients with hearing aid in one ear and CI in the opposite ear. Future studies are planned to correlate the EMO-CHeQ questionnaire with the TEPP test battery, and to examine the effects of CI treatment on emotional prosody perception using a before-and-after comparison.