Effects of spectral resolution on spectral contrast effects in cochlear-implant users

The identity of a speech sound can be affected by the long-term spectrum of a preceding stimulus. Poor spectral resolution of cochlear implants (CIs) may affect such context effects. Here, spectral contrast effects on a phoneme category boundary were investigated in CI users and normal-hearing (NH) listeners. Surprisingly, larger contrast effects were observed in CI users than in NH listeners, even when spectral resolution in NH listeners was limited via vocoder processing. The results may reflect a different weighting of spectral cues by CI users, based on poorer spectral resolution, which in turn may enhance some spectral contrast effects.