Clin Exp Otorhinolaryngol.  2012 Apr;5(Suppl 1):S53-S58.

Music Perception Ability of Korean Adult Cochlear Implant Listeners

• Kim E
• Lee HJ
• Kim HJ

Abstract

OBJECTIVES
Although the cochlear implant (CI) is successful for understanding speech in patients with severe to profound hearing loss, listening to music is a challenging task to most CI listeners. The purpose of this study was to assess music perception ability and to provide clinically useful information regarding CI rehabilitation.
METHODS
Ten normal hearing and ten CI listeners with implant experience, ranging 2 to 6 years, participated in the subtests of pitch, rhythm, melody, and instrument. A synthesized piano tone was used as musical stimuli. Participants were asked to discriminate two different tones during the pitch subtest. The rhythm subtest was constructed with sets of five, six, and seven intervals. The melody & instrument subtests assessed recognition of eight familiar melodies and five musical instruments from a closed set, respectively.
RESULTS
CI listeners performed significantly poorer than normal hearing listeners in pitch, melody, and instrument identification tasks. No significant differences were observed in rhythm recognition between groups. Correlations were not found between music perception ability and word recognition scores.
CONCLUSION
The results are consistent with previous studies that have shown that pitch, melody, and instrument identifications are difficult to identify for CI users. Our results can provide fundamental information concerning the development of CI rehabilitation tools.

Keyword

Cochlear implant; Music perception; Korean cochlear implant listener

MeSH Terms

Adult
Cochlear Implants
Hearing
Hearing Loss
Humans
Music
Perception

Figure

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  Fig. 1 Mean semitones of pitch discrimination test in cochlear implant users (CI) and normal-hearing controls (NH). Difference limen refers to the minimum size of the interval for subjects to distinguish that they are different notes. *The significant difference between groups.

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  Fig. 2 Percent correct of the rhythm subtest by group. NH, normal-hearing; CI, cochlear implant. *The significant difference between intervals.

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  Fig. 3 Performance of melody identification by group. NH, normal-hearing; CI, cochlear implant. *The significant difference between groups.

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  Fig. 4 Percent correct responses by cochlear implant listeners for each instrument.

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  Fig. 5 Mean performances of music perception ability by normal-hearing controls (NH) and cochlear implant (CI) users. The asterisk symbols represent the significant difference between groups.

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  Fig. 6 Percent correct of pitch (square), rhythm (circle), melody (triangle), and instrument (diamond) identification for cochlear implant listeners.

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