Graeme Clark Collection
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ItemThe Tickle Talker: a speech perception aid for profoundly hearing impaired children [Abstract]( 1990)Fifteen prelingually profoundly hearing-impaired children participated in speech perception training and evaluation, to assess potential benefits from use of the Tickle Talker. This device, a multichannel electrotactile speech processor, developed by Cochlear Pty. Ltd. and the University of Melbourne, presents speech as a pattern of electrical sensations felt on the fingers. The eight small electrodes are located over the digital nerve bundles, on both sides of the four fingers of the non-dominant hand. Speech processing hardware is similar to that used in the 22-channel cochlear implant. In the encoding strategy, second formant frequency (F2) is presented as electrode position, speech waveform amplitude as stimulus strength, and fundamental frequency (FO) as rate of stimulation. Each child participated in an ongoing training program involving clinicians, teachers and parents. The evaluation program included measures of sound and speech detection thresholds, and discrimination of speech features, words and open-set sentences. Both individual and mean scores for all the children demonstrate significant improvements in speech perception scores when input from the Tickle Talker is combined with either aided-residual hearing, or aided residual hearing and lipreading. These results are consistent with those previously reported for profoundly hearing-impaired adults using the Tickle Talker, and indicate that children are able to integrate speech information provided through the tactual modality with information from vision or residual hearing.
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ItemPerception of sentences, words, and speech features by profoundly hearing-impaired children using a multichannel electrotactile speech processor( 1990)Abstract not available due to copyright.
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ItemSpeech feature recognition by profoundly hearing impaired children using a multiple-channel electrotactile speech processor and aided residual hearing( 1990)Abstract not available due to copyright.
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ItemSpeech feature recognition with an electrotactile speech processor( 1989)The performance of eight subjects was assessed on a closed-set tactual test battery to evaluate efficiency of the speech feature encoding strategy currently used in the University of Melbourne multichannel electrotactile speech processor. The test battery included twelve subtests of suprasegmental and segmental speech feature contrasts. Results showed that all subjects scored significantly above chance on suprasegmental features such as syllable number, stress and vowel length. In addition, seven of the eight subjects scored significantly above chance for vowel formant frequency discrimination. Scores for manner of articulation contrasts were more variable, with better performance for the higher frequency, longer duration fricatives and affricates. Scores for voicing contrasts suggested that improvements to the tactual coding of this feature could be achieved. The second study examined the contribution of the tactual input to consonant feature identification for subjects using the electrotactile aid in combination with either a low-pass filtered auditory input or different levels of aided residual hearing and lipreading. Results for four normally-hearing subjects showed increased voicing and manner identification scores with the addition of tactual input. Similar results were found for two hearing-impaired subjects, one using the tactual input in combination with lipreading and one using the tactual input in combination with aided residual hearing.
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ItemSpeech perception studies using a multichannel electrotactile speech processor, residual hearing, and lipreading( 1989)Abstract not available due to copyright.
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ItemSpeech perception using combinations of auditory, visual, and tactile information( 1989)Four normally-hearing subjects were trained and tested with all combinations of a highly-degraded auditory input, a visual input via lipreading, and a tactile input using a multichannel electrotactile speech processor. The speech perception of the subjects was assessed with closed sets of vowels, consonants, and multisyllabic words; with open sets of words and sentences, and with speech tracking. When the visual input was added to any combination of other inputs, a significant improvement occurred for every test. Similarly, the auditory input produced a significant improvement for all tests except closed-set vowel recognition. The tactile input produced scores that were significantly greater than chance in isolation, but combined less effectively with the other modalities. The addition of the tactile input did produce significant improvements for vowel recognition in the auditory-tactile condition, for consonant recognition in the auditory-tactile and visual-tactile conditions, and in open-set word recognition in the visual-tactile condition. Information transmission analysis of the features of vowels and consonants indicated that the information from auditory and visual inputs were integrated much more effectively than information from the tactile input. The less effective combination might be due to lack of training with the tactile input, or to more fundamental limitations in the processing of multimodal stimuli.
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ItemSpeech feature recognition by profoundly deaf children using the University of Melbourne multichannel electrotactile aid [Abstract]( 1989)Abstract not available due to copyright.
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ItemResults for two children using a multiple-electrode intracochlear implant( 1989)Abstract not available due to copyright.
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ItemSpeech perception, production and language results in a group of children using the 22-electrode cochlear implant( 1989)Paper presented at the 118th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America