An extra-cochlear stimulation system has been investigated as a less invasive\nalternative to conventional cochlear implant; however, the system is used\nprimarily as a speech-reading aid. The purpose of this study was to develop a\nspeech encoding scheme for the extra-cochlear stimulation system to convey\nintelligible speech. A click-modulated speech sound (CMS) was created as a\nsimulation of the extra-cochlear stimulation system. The CMS is a repetitive\nclick with a repetition rate similar to the form ant frequency transition of an\noriginal sound. Seven native Japanese speakers with normal hearing participated\nin the experiment. After listening to the CMS, synthesized from low\nfamiliarity Japanese words, the subjects reported their perceptions. The results\nshowed that the rates of correctly identified vowels and consonants were\nsignificantly higher than those of the control stimulus, suggesting that the\nCMS can generate at least partially intelligible vowel and consonant perceptions.\nIn all, the speech encoding scheme could be applied to the extra-\ncochlear stimulation system to restore speech perception.
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