Multisensory Integration-Attention Trade-Off in Cochlear-Implanted Deaf Individuals
The cochlear implant (CI) allows profoundly deaf individuals to partially recover hearing. Still, due to the coarse acoustic information provided by the implant, CI users have considerable difficulties in recognizing speech, especially in noisy environments. CI users therefore rely heavily on visual...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2021-07-01
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| Series: | Frontiers in Neuroscience |
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| Online Access: | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2021.683804/full |
| _version_ | 1818650296247648256 |
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| author | Luuk P. H. van de Rijt A. John van Opstal Marc M. van Wanrooij |
| author_facet | Luuk P. H. van de Rijt A. John van Opstal Marc M. van Wanrooij |
| author_sort | Luuk P. H. van de Rijt |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | The cochlear implant (CI) allows profoundly deaf individuals to partially recover hearing. Still, due to the coarse acoustic information provided by the implant, CI users have considerable difficulties in recognizing speech, especially in noisy environments. CI users therefore rely heavily on visual cues to augment speech recognition, more so than normal-hearing individuals. However, it is unknown how attention to one (focused) or both (divided) modalities plays a role in multisensory speech recognition. Here we show that unisensory speech listening and reading were negatively impacted in divided-attention tasks for CI users—but not for normal-hearing individuals. Our psychophysical experiments revealed that, as expected, listening thresholds were consistently better for the normal-hearing, while lipreading thresholds were largely similar for the two groups. Moreover, audiovisual speech recognition for normal-hearing individuals could be described well by probabilistic summation of auditory and visual speech recognition, while CI users were better integrators than expected from statistical facilitation alone. Our results suggest that this benefit in integration comes at a cost. Unisensory speech recognition is degraded for CI users when attention needs to be divided across modalities. We conjecture that CI users exhibit an integration-attention trade-off. They focus solely on a single modality during focused-attention tasks, but need to divide their limited attentional resources in situations with uncertainty about the upcoming stimulus modality. We argue that in order to determine the benefit of a CI for speech recognition, situational factors need to be discounted by presenting speech in realistic or complex audiovisual environments. |
| first_indexed | 2024-12-17T01:47:58Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-0ff4e561df6041e7aa8f6f4e887043aa |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1662-453X |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-12-17T01:47:58Z |
| publishDate | 2021-07-01 |
| publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Frontiers in Neuroscience |
| spelling | doaj.art-0ff4e561df6041e7aa8f6f4e887043aa2022-12-21T22:08:08ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Neuroscience1662-453X2021-07-011510.3389/fnins.2021.683804683804Multisensory Integration-Attention Trade-Off in Cochlear-Implanted Deaf IndividualsLuuk P. H. van de Rijt0A. John van Opstal1Marc M. van Wanrooij2Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboudumc, Nijmegen, NetherlandsDepartment of Biophysics, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University, Nijmegen, NetherlandsDepartment of Biophysics, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University, Nijmegen, NetherlandsThe cochlear implant (CI) allows profoundly deaf individuals to partially recover hearing. Still, due to the coarse acoustic information provided by the implant, CI users have considerable difficulties in recognizing speech, especially in noisy environments. CI users therefore rely heavily on visual cues to augment speech recognition, more so than normal-hearing individuals. However, it is unknown how attention to one (focused) or both (divided) modalities plays a role in multisensory speech recognition. Here we show that unisensory speech listening and reading were negatively impacted in divided-attention tasks for CI users—but not for normal-hearing individuals. Our psychophysical experiments revealed that, as expected, listening thresholds were consistently better for the normal-hearing, while lipreading thresholds were largely similar for the two groups. Moreover, audiovisual speech recognition for normal-hearing individuals could be described well by probabilistic summation of auditory and visual speech recognition, while CI users were better integrators than expected from statistical facilitation alone. Our results suggest that this benefit in integration comes at a cost. Unisensory speech recognition is degraded for CI users when attention needs to be divided across modalities. We conjecture that CI users exhibit an integration-attention trade-off. They focus solely on a single modality during focused-attention tasks, but need to divide their limited attentional resources in situations with uncertainty about the upcoming stimulus modality. We argue that in order to determine the benefit of a CI for speech recognition, situational factors need to be discounted by presenting speech in realistic or complex audiovisual environments.https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2021.683804/fullmultisensory integrationfocused attentiondivided attentioncochlear implantaudiovisualspeech perception |
| spellingShingle | Luuk P. H. van de Rijt A. John van Opstal Marc M. van Wanrooij Multisensory Integration-Attention Trade-Off in Cochlear-Implanted Deaf Individuals Frontiers in Neuroscience multisensory integration focused attention divided attention cochlear implant audiovisual speech perception |
| title | Multisensory Integration-Attention Trade-Off in Cochlear-Implanted Deaf Individuals |
| title_full | Multisensory Integration-Attention Trade-Off in Cochlear-Implanted Deaf Individuals |
| title_fullStr | Multisensory Integration-Attention Trade-Off in Cochlear-Implanted Deaf Individuals |
| title_full_unstemmed | Multisensory Integration-Attention Trade-Off in Cochlear-Implanted Deaf Individuals |
| title_short | Multisensory Integration-Attention Trade-Off in Cochlear-Implanted Deaf Individuals |
| title_sort | multisensory integration attention trade off in cochlear implanted deaf individuals |
| topic | multisensory integration focused attention divided attention cochlear implant audiovisual speech perception |
| url | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2021.683804/full |
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