Multimodal perception of Mandarin tone for cochlear implant users

Due to limitations of cochlear implant (CI) technology in transmitting fundamental frequency (f0), there is poor perception of lexical tone by CI users. Here simulated cochlear implant audio is used to investigate the role of visual speech information in Mandarin tone discrimination. Results showed that visual information improved tone perception in both Mandarin and Australian English listeners, particularly in CI simulation conditions, and particularly for tone pairs where tonal distinctions are cued by non-f0 components, suggesting that tone discrimination in CI users can be trained.