Effects of auditory training on cochlear implant users’ gender categorization

Nowadays, the benefits of cochlear implants (CIs) for individuals with a substantial degree of hearing loss are widely demonstrated in clinical applications in terms of both speech recognition and speech production. However, a body of evidence indicates CI users’ compromised ability to accurately categorize gender of the voice (e.g., Fuller et al., J. Assoc. Res. Otol. 15, 1037–1048, 2014), which may be an obstacle to overcome to improve executive functions for communication with the device. While it has been known that CI users are capable of utilizing the fundamental frequency (F0) of the voice as the primary determinant of gender categorization, poor differential selectivity in F0 with the device attributes to the compromised ability. Another vocal characteristic, vocal tract length (VTL), which is known to play an important role in gender categorization in normal hearing (NH) listeners, is largely ignored in CI users. Considering that the VTL information, grossly reflected on formants, may be transmit...