Conference
American Auditory Society 2022 Poster: Scottsdale, Arizona
The lab traveled in force with poster presentations by myself, Steven Gianakas, AuD, and Michael Smith, AuD, as well as a main session talk by our advisor, Matthew Winn, AuD, PhD.
I presented the above poster, the beginning stages of my work on perception of vocal prosody. Information structure, or the way we speak to convey what content is important, shared, or contradictory to the understanding between communication partners, is conveyed through talkers' manipulation of vocal acoustics. The acoustic dimensions which are commonly observed for contributing to this structure are voice pitch, intensity, and speaking-rate/ durational cues. Cochlear implant users, as a result of changes to their auditory system relative to those with normal hearing, as well as loss of information by signal degredation through their devices, likely have different access to these acoustic cues. Weaker perception of "prosodic focus" of words aligns with anecdotal reports for CI users, such as being able to hear the words being spoken by a talker but not meaning that is implied by the way the speaker says the words.
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