Data from: Consonant perception and error patterns in children and adults with cochlear implants
Data files
Mar 25, 2026 version files 51.36 KB
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ConsonantAnalysis.R
6.45 KB
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ParticipantsAndConsonantIdentification.xlsx
17.15 KB
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README.md
3.58 KB
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SINFAresults.xlsx
24.18 KB
Abstract
This study investigated the effects of age and hearing history on consonant perception scores and confusion patterns in early implanted youth (i.e., child-implanted) and post-lingually implanted adults (i.e., adult-implanted), as well as in participants with normal hearing (NH) who listened to spectrally degraded (vocoded) stimuli.
Vocoded consonant perception improved with chronological age in children with NH. For the cochlear implant (CI) users, more auditory experience and shorter durations of deafness were associated with better consonant perception scores, especially in child-implanted listeners. Individuals in the child-implanted group also made significantly more errors in identifying the voiceless fricative, /θ/, than did adult-implanted listeners. Individual differences in phoneme error patterns could inform personalized intervention strategies, and child-implanted listeners might derive particular benefit from interventions that improve access to formant transitions or high-frequency energy. Moreover, while CI experience and early implantation benefit many CI users of all ages, delayed intervention may be more detrimental to the speech perception outcomes of prelingually deafened than post-lingually implanted individuals.
Dataset DOI: 10.5061/dryad.2547d7x5h
Description of the data and file structure
To analyze consonant perception performance as a function of demographic variables (age, cochlear implant experience, and duration of deafness) in children and adults with cochlear implants and with normal hearing.
Files and variables
File: SINFAresults.xlsx
Description: contains the results of the sequential information transmission analysis (SINFA) for the consonant features of manner, voicing, and place of articulation
Variables
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id: Participant ID
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ear: Ear tested (R = right; L = left; B = bilateral)
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ear_implanted: 1 = first-implanted ear; 2 = second-implanted ear (for CI participants only - NH participants have "NA" in this field)
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ear_code: 0 = first-implanted ear; 1 = second-implanted ear (for CI participants only - NH participants have "NA" in this field)
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Group: Hearing group (adult-implanted, child-implanted, children, or adults)
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group_code: 0 = child-implanted or children; 1 = adult-implanted or adults
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modality: Mode of hearing (CI or NH)
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modality_code 0 = CI; 1 = NH
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feature: Consonant feature (manner, place, or voicing)
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percent_transmitted: Percent of information transmitted for each feature
File: ParticipantsAndConsonantIdentification.xlsx
Description: contains demographic information about participants and their consonant identification scores
Variables
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id: Participant ID
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ear: Ear tested (R = right; L = left; B = bilateral)
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age: Chronological age at time of test (in years)
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ear_implanted: 1 = first-implanted ear; 2 = second-implanted ear (for CI participants only - NH participants have "NA" in this field)
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ear_code: 0 = first-implanted ear; 1 = second-implanted ear (for CI participants only - NH participants have "NA" in this field)
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age_implanted: Age at time of cochlear implantation for each ear in years (for CI participants only - NH participants have "NA" in this field)
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CI_experience: Duration of CI experience for each ear in years (for CI participants only - NH participants have "NA" in this field)
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duration_deaf: Duration of severe-to-profound hearing loss for each ear prior to receiving a CI in years (for CI participants only - NH participants have "NA" in this field)
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Group Hearing: group (adult-implanted, child-implanted, children, or adults)
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group_code: 0 = child-implanted or children; 1 = adult-implanted or adults
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modality: Mode of hearing (CI or NH)
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modality_code: 0 = CI; 1 = NH
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cons_RAU: Consonant perception score in rationalized arcsine units (RAU)
File: ConsonantAnalysis.R
Description: Code in R to conduct the analysis described in the manuscript: analysis of consonant perception performance and confusion patterns as a function of demographic variables (age, cochlear implant experience, duration of deafness) in children and adults with cochlear implants and with normal hearing.
Code/software
Microsoft Excel to view data files.
R and R Studio (version 2024.12.1 or higher) to run analysis code. Required R packages: tidyverse, xlsx, lmerTest, emmeans, rmcorr.
Access information
Other publicly accessible locations of the data:
- None
Data was derived from the following sources:
- None
Human subjects data
All participant data was deidentified. Participants were assigned an identification code that is associated with their data.
Consonant perception testing was conducted in a double-walled sound-treated booth. Consonants were vocoded for normal hearing children and adults. Participants with cochlear implants heard the normal, unprocessed sounds.
Stimuli were presented through a loudspeaker (Bose 161) that was placed at 0 degrees azimuth and one meter from the participant’s head. Stimuli were calibrated to a level of 60 dB-A and presented via ListPlayer2 software (Version 2.2.11.52, Advanced Bionics, Valencia, CA). After each speech token was presented, the participant saw a graphical user interface with all 16 /aCa/ tokens displayed on a computer screen in front of them. On each trial, the participants indicated what they heard by selecting the corresponding /aCa/ token using a computer mouse.
Experimental runs commenced after participants completed the practice runs. Consonant tokens were pseudo randomly interleaved, and each token was presented a minimum of six times during the experiment. Participants completed two test runs wherein each consonant token was repeated three times during a single run. If the percent correct across the first two runs differed from one another by more than 10%, a third run was conducted. Performance across all two or three runs was averaged to calculate an overall percent correct score for each participant. Chance level performance was 6.25%.
Consonant perception was characterized by evaluating overall performance, examining phoneme error patterns (confusion matrices), and quantifying transmission of acoustic-phonetic features (sequential information analysis, or SINFA).