The effects of reverberant self- and overlap-masking on speech recognition in cochlear implant listeners

Abstract

Many cochlear implant (CI) listeners experience decreased speech recognition in reverberant environments [Kokkinakis et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 129(5), 3221–3232 (2011)], which may be caused by a combination of self- and overlap-masking [Bolt and MacDonald, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 21(6), 577–580 (1949)]. Determining the extent to which these effects decrease speech recognition for CI listeners may influence reverberation mitigation algorithms. This study compared speech recognition with ideal self-masking mitigation, with ideal overlap-masking mitigation, and with no mitigation. Under these conditions, mitigating either self- or overlap-masking resulted in significant improvements in speech recognition for both normal hearing subjects utilizing an acoustic model and for CI listeners using their own devices.