The impact of speaking style on speech recognition in quiet and multi-talker babble in adult cochlear implant users

The current study examined sentence recognition across speaking styles (conversational, neutral, and clear) in quiet and multi-talker babble (MTB) for cochlear implant (CI) users and normal-hearing listeners under CI simulations. Listeners demonstrated poorer recognition accuracy in MTB than in quiet, but were relatively more accurate with clear speech overall. Within CI users, higher-performing participants were also more accurate in MTB when listening to clear speech. Lower performing users' accuracy was not impacted by speaking style. Clear speech may facilitate recognition in MTB for high-performing users, who may be better able to take advantage of clear speech cues.