The recognition of vowels differing by a single formant by cochlear-implant subjects

The ability to recognize synthetic, two-formant vowels with equal duration and similar loudness was measured in five subjects with the Cochlear and five subjects with the Symbion cochlear implants. In one set of test stimuli, vowel pairs differed only in the first-formant frequency (F1). In another set, vowel pairs differed only in the second-formant frequency (F2). When F1 differed, four of five Cochlear subjects and four of five Symbion subjects recognized the vowels significantly above chance. When F2 differed, two of five Cochlear subjects and three of five Symbion subjects scored above chance. These results suggest that implanted subjects can utilize both “place” information across different electrodes and “rate” information on a single electrode to derive information about the spectral content of the stimulus.