Graeme Clark Collection

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    Using an automatic word-tagger to analyse the spoken language of children with impaired hearing
    Blamey, P. J. ; Grogan, M. L. ; Shields, M. B. ( 1994)
    The grammatical analysis and description of spoken language of children with impaired hearing is time-consuming, but has important implications for their habilitation and educational management. Word-tagging programs have achieved high levels of accuracy with text and adult spoken language. This paper investigates the accuracy of one automatic word tagger (AUTASYS 3.0 developed for the International Corpus of English project, ICE) on a small corpus of spoken language samples from children using a cochlear implant. The accuracy of the tagging and the usefulness of the results in comparison with more conventional analyses are discussed.
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    Results of multiple-electrode cochlear implants in children
    Tong, Y. C. ; Blamey, P. J. ; Dowell, R. C. ; Nienhuys, T. G. ; Musgrave, G. N. ; Mecklenburg, D. J. ; Busby, P. A. ; Roberts, S. A. ; Dowell, R. C. ; Musgrave, G. N. ; Blamey, P. J. ( 1987)
    Children in Australia and United States of America are now being implanted with the Nucleus 22 electrode intracochlear prosthesis utilizing the F0/F1F2 coding strategy. A total of 32 adolescents (10-17 years) and 24 preadolescents (2-9 years) have been implanted as of 31 August, 1987. No significant postoperative complications were recorded, the speech processors were successfully programmed, and all are users of the device. For the 56 children, the average length of postoperative stimulation time is 2.8 months. Because the majority of children have such short experience with the device we report herein two children from the University of Melbourne (A) and two children from the United States (U) who have been using the Nucleus system for 12 months or more. Child 1A has only 10 electrodes in the cochlea; therefore, the number of channels programmed for the children is 10, 17, 18 and 18, respectively. Child Al and A2 were deafened by meningitis at 3-3 and 3 years of age, respectively. Child U3 became profoundly deafened from a progressive sensorineural loss at age 11 and Child U4 was deafened by recurrent cochlear hydrops at age 13 years.
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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.