Perception and interpretation of low-onset rising tunesby prelingually deaf cochlear implant users

Production studies have shown that the intonational tunes L*H-H% and L*L-H% may be used for different discourse functions in Australian English [1,2,3,4]. This study investigates whether prelingually deaf cochlear implant (CI) users can discriminate between changes in the starting point of a rise, as distinguishes these tunes phonetically. We also assessed their interpretation of these tunes. 10 CI users and 19 NH listeners completed an AXB task where the alignment of the rise startpoint was varied in 50 milliscond steps, and the rise endpoint was either 10 or 19 semitones. The CI users could only discriminate between rises with at least 200 ms difference in rise startpoints, while the NH listeners only required 100 ms difference. Both groups most frequently interpreted the L*H-H% tunes as questions and the L*L-H% tunes as statements. For NH listeners, earlier rise startpoints were associated with more ‘question’ responses.