The focus of this work is on which acoustic cues in the speech signal are most important for speech perception in difficult listening situations, particularly when listening in noisy backgrounds and for hearing-impaired listeners.
We have a funded PhD project looking into the application of automated speech recognition based speech landmark detection to cochlear implant processing. A second aspect of this work is a focus on understanding which low frequency speech cues are most important for determining benefit when low frequency residual amplified hearing is combined with electric (cochlear implant) hearing, in order to decide how low frequency residual hearing can be optimised via amplification, and what aspects of hearing need to be preserved when considering hearing preservation cochlear implantation.
PhD student: Cherith Webb
Total funding to date: £70,000