Emotional and autonomic responses to natural sounds in listeners with cochlear implants

This study characterized emotional responses to environmental sounds in 35 adults, including 18 cochlear implant (CI) users and 17 listeners with normal hearing (NH), using a comprehensive battery of self-report, behavioral, and autonomic measures. Changes in emotional reactions, pupil dilation, and skin conductance were assessed while participants listened to a series of emotionally evocative, naturally occurring sounds. The CI listeners exhibited a constricted range of emotional responses to the sounds, wherein they perceived pleasant and unpleasant sounds to be significantly less pleasant and less unpleasant, respectively, than the NH listeners. This reduced valence range was statistically associated with self-reported emotional deficits in daily life. Furthermore, the CI listeners exhibited significantly slower sound-evoked pupil dilations than the NH listeners, suggesting that they were slower to process the emotionally evocative sounds. These findings can support clinicians in identifying targets for counseling and rehabilitation to improve quality of life for adult CI listeners. The differences in emotional responses to naturalistic stimuli in CI listeners also highlight the need for future research to explore ecologically valid measures of assessment and rehabilitation.