If a cochlear implant encodes speech information using a limited number of electrodes and current levels, which consequence follows for the recipient's perception of vowels?

💡 Explanation

A compressed vowel space is the most likely outcome because the limited encoding capability forces the implant to represent distinct vowels with fewer, less precise parameters. This is due to rate-distortion theory dictating information loss under constrained encoding. Therefore, the vowel space is compressed, rather than leading to complete loss of identification which is less probable with residual cues.

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