Effects of pulse width, pulse rate and paired electrode stimulation on psychophysical measures of dynamic range and speech recognition in cochlear implants.

Objectives: In this article results are described of a study on the effects of stimulation rate (PR), pulse duration (PW), and paired pulsatile stimulation (PPS) versus continuous interleaved sampling (CIS) on speech perception and psychophysical loudness measures.

Methods: During 3 nonconsecutive days, 27 postlingually deafened patients, implanted with either a CII or a HiRes90K with a HiFocus electrode array, were fitted with nine 12-channel strategies after a Latin-square design, systematically investigating the effect of stimulation rate (774-3868 pps/channel), PW (11-43 µsec/phase), and PPS versus CIS. Speech perception was measured in phonemes using open-set monosyllabic words.