Graeme Clark Collection

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    Initial results for six patients with a multiple-channel cochlear prosthesis
    Dowell, R. C. ; Brown, A. M. ; Seligman, P. M. ; Clark, Graeme M. (Monash University Press, 1983)
    A total of eight patients have been assessed with the multi-channel cochlear prosthesis at the University of Melbourne. The first two patients were implanted with a prototype device in 1978 and 1979, and their results with various speech evaluation procedures have been reported and summarized in detail elsewhere (Clark & Tong, 1982). Briefly, these results indicated that some very significant benefit could be obtained for these patients when using the cochlear prosthesis with external speech processing, particularly when using the device in conjunction with lipreading. It was also shown that some significant understanding of speech was possible without lipreading (open-set) for both patients, although this was fairly limited.
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    An extension of the Multipeak speech processing strategy for the MSP/MINI 22 cochlear implant system
    Jones, P. A. ; McDermott, H. J. ; Sellgman, P. M. ; Millar, J. B. ( 1992)
    The speech perception of three post-linguistically deaf adults using the Nucleus MSP/Mini System 22 cochlear implant system programmed with a new speech processing strategy, MPEAK+AO. was evaluated. The MPEAK+AO strategy retains all the information of the standard Multipeak speech processing strategy and additionally presents acoustic components below 400Hz to the most-apical electrode. This extra spectral Information may help implantees understand speech, particularly in noise. Since the estimated fundamental frequency is presented as the rate of stimulation at a fixed intracochlear site and is thereby potentially perceived more easily. and the amplitude of the stimulation on the apical electrode, associated with the voice fundamental, Is directly determined from the estimated energy in the relevant spectral region. these coding factors may provide a better representation ot the prosodic information in speech and a more complete auditory feedback signal. The comparison between Multipeak and MPEAK+AO included tests of vowel, consonant and CNC word recognition. Speech materials were presented with both a male and female speaker. Sentence material. presented with background masking noise (four-speaker babble) was also used. The results showed that the new strategy significantly improved the ability of these MSP users to recognise words in open-set sentences in noisy conditions.
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    Signal processing in quiet and noise
    Dowell, R. C. ; Patrick, J. F. ; Blamey, P. J. ; Seligman, P. M. ; Money, D. K. ; Clark, Graeme M. ( 1987)
    It has been shown that many profoundly deaf patients using multichannel cochlear implants are able to understand significant amounts of conversational speech using the prosthesis without the aid of lipreading. These results are usually obtained under ideal acoustic conditions but, unfortunately, the environments in which the prostheses are most often used are rarely perfect. Some form of competing signal is always present in the urban setting, from other conversations, radio and television, appliances, traffic noise and so on. As might be expected, implant users in general find background noise to be the largest detrimental factor in their understanding of speech, both with and without the aid of lipreading. Recently, some assessment of implant patient performance with competing noise has been attempted using a four-alternative forced-choice spondee test (1) at Iowa University. Similar testing has been carried out at the University of Melbourne with a group of patients using the Nucleus multichannel cochlear prosthesis. This study formed part of an assessment of a two formant (F0/FI/F2) speech coding strategy (2). Results suggested that the new scheme provided improved speech recognition both in quiet and with competing noise. This paper reports on some more detailed investigations into the effects of background noise on speech recognition for multichannel cochlear implant users.
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    A formant-estimating speech processor for cochlear implant patients
    Blamey, P. J. ; Dowell, R. C. ; Brown, A. M. ; Seligman, P. M. ; Clark, Graeme M. (Speech Science and Technology Conference, 1986)
    A simple formant-estimating speech processor has been developed to make use of the "hearing" produced by electrical stimulation of the auditory nerve with a multiple-channel cochlear implant. Thirteen implant patients were trained and evaluated with a processor that presented the second formant frequency, fundamental frequency, and amplitude envelope of the speech. Nine patients were trained and evaluated with a processor that presented the first formant frequency and amplitude as well. The second group performed significantly better in discrimination tasks and word and sentence recognition through hearing alone. The second group also showed a significantly greater improvement when hearing and lipreading was compared with lipreading alone in a speech tracking task.