Perceptual contribution of vowels and consonants to sentence intelligibility by cochlear implant users

In this paper, we assess the perceptual contributions of vowel versus consonant information to speech perception by unilateral and bilateral cochlear implant (CI) listeners. Consistent with the earlier results reported for normal hearing and hearing impaired listeners, vowels play a significantly more important role compared to consonants in the sentence perception by cochlear implant listeners. In addition, binaural advantages are observed in speech recognition when the transitional portion between vowels and consonants was added to either vowels alone or consonants alone. The results showed that the vowel-consonant boundary transitions significantly improved the intelligibility of both vowel- and consonant-only sentences for unilateral and bilateral cochlear implant users.