A comparative study of pitch recognition in children with cochlear implants and normal hearing peers across Mandarin tones.

Objective: This study aims to systematically compare the pitch recognition abilities of Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants (CI) and their normal-hearing (NH) peers, examining performance variations across different pitch levels (high, normal, low) and Mandarin lexical tones (T1-T4). Methods: A comparative experiment was conducted involving 25 children with CI and 25 age-matched NH children. Using acoustic analysis, pitch recognition was assessed through a task where participants identified pitch levels in sentences representing the four Mandarin tones. Results: Children with CI demonstrated a dissociated pattern of pitch recognition. Their performance in recognizing high pitch was comparable to that of NH children. However, they exhibited significant deficits in recognizing both normal and low pitch. Furthermore, the type of Mandarin lexical tone did not significantly modulate pitch recognition accuracy in either group. Conclusion: The findings indicate a selective deficit in pitch recognition among children with CI, primarily affecting the normal and low pitch ranges. The results provide empirical evidence for developing targeted auditory rehabilitation strategies that address the specific pitch recognition challenges faced by pediatric CI users.