Contributions of temporal fine structure cues to Chinese speech recognition in cochlear implant simulation

This study evaluated the relative contributions of temporal fine structure cues in different frequency bands to Mandarin speech recognition both in quiet and in noise. Chinese tone, vowel, consonant and sentence recognition scores were measured in a 4-channel continuous interleaved sampling (CIS) simulation model with six kinds of carriers: all noise carriers (N1234), all fine structure carriers (F1234) and fine structure carrier in one channel while noise carriers in the others (F1N234,F2N134, F3N124, F4N123). Results showed that low-frequency fine structure below 400 Hz contributed significantly to tone recognition, while mid-frequency fine structure from 400 to 1000 Hz contributed most to vowel and consonant recognition in quiet. But in severe noise it was the common contributions of the temporal fine structure in each band that improved the recognition performance of vowel and consonant significantly. For sentence recognition tones contributed most compared to vowel and consonant.