Affiliations: Department of psychology, University of Montreal,
Montreal, QC, Canada | Research center, Sainte-Justine Hospital, Montreal,
QC, Canada | School of speech language pathology and audiology,
University of Montreal, Montreal, QC, Canada
Note: [] Corresponding author: Hugo Théoret, PhD, Department of
psychology, University of Montreal, CP 6128, Succ. Centre-Ville, Montreal, QC,
H3C 3J7, Canada. Tel.: +1 514 343 6362; Fax: +1 514 343 5787; E-mail:
[email protected]
Abstract: Purpose: Recent studies suggest that cochlear implant (CI) users
have a typical, and perhaps improved, ability to fuse congruent multisensory
information. The ability to fuse incongruent auditory and visual inputs,
however, remains to be fully investigated. Methods: Here, performance on
a classical audiovisual task (the McGurk effect) was assessed in seventeen
cochlear-implanted, postlingually deaf individuals with varied degrees of
auditory competency. Results: In line with previous studies, our results
revealed audiovisual fusion abilities that were within normal limits in CI
users compared to normally-hearing (NH) participants. A different pattern of
response emerged, however, when participants' responses were analyzed according
to the degree of auditory proficiency with the CI. Although proficient CI users
(pCI) and NH participants favoured auditory input when multisensory signals
were not fused, only the non-proficient CI users (npCI) relied predominantly on
visual cues to resolve audiovisual conflict. This pattern was found despite a
similar percentage of fused percepts between pCI users, npCI users and NH
participants. Conclusion: These data show a remarkable level of
similarity between pCI users and NH individuals in the perception of
incongruent audiovisual information, suggesting that optimal auditory
performance with the CI is associated with normal fusion of conflicting
audiovisual input.
