Evaluation of a bone-conducted ultrasonic hearing aid in vocal emotion transmission

Human listeners can perceive speech signals in a voicemodulated ultrasonic carrier from a bone-conduction stimulator, even if the listeners are patients with sensorineural hearing loss. Considering this fact, we have developed a bone-conducted ultrasonic hearing aid (BCUHA). The purpose of this study was to assess the usefulness of the BCUHA in transmission of the emotional state of the speaker. The evaluation used emotionidentification experiments. Types of emotion included Ekman’s basic 6 emotions (“anger,” “disgust,” “fear,” “joy,” “sadness,” and “surprise”) and “neutral.” The experiments were also conducted under air-conduction (AC) and cochlear implant simulator (CIsim) conditions. The results showed that emotion was transmitted more effectively with the BCUHA than CIsim.