Contribution
Pitch strength for normal-hearing listeners and cochlear-implant users
* Presenting author
Abstract:
The pitch strength indicates how strong the pitch of a sound is perceived. It is used, among others, to decide if environmental sound contain tonal components. This study presents data on pitch strength for normal-hearing (NH) listeners and cochlea-implant (CI) users. As stimuli, various artificial sounds, including pure tones, complex tones, band-pass noises, and periodically amplitude-modulated were used. The stimulus types were essentially the same as those used by Fastl and Stoll [Fastl., H, Stoll, G., 1979, Scaling of pitch strength, Hearing research 1, 293-301] with slight differences regarding filtering of the noises and the procedure. These two differences are likely to explain most of the incongruities between the results of the two studies for the NH listeners, e.g. that amplitude modulated sinusoids and band-pass noises have a higher pitch strength in the present study. The ratings of the CI users covered a similar range as those of the NH listeners, i.e. CI users are able to rate to a certain extent the pitch strength of a stimulus. However, for some stimuli, pitch strength was considerably lower than for normal-hearing listeners, indicating that the CI does not provide enough information for all aspects of pitch strength.