Use of Acoustic Cues by Children With Cochlear Implants
Publication: Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research
Volume 53, Number 6
Pages 1440-1457
Abstract
Purpose
This study examined the use of different acoustic cues in auditory perception of consonant and vowel contrasts by profoundly deaf children with a cochlear implant (CI) in comparison to age-matched children and young adults with normal hearing.
Method
A speech sound categorization task in an XAB format was administered to 15 children ages 5–6 with a CI (mean age at implant: 1;8 [years;months]), 20 normal-hearing age-matched children, and 21 normal-hearing adults. Four contrasts were examined: /ɑ/–/a/, /i/–/i/, /bu/–/pu/, and /fu/–/su/. Measures included phoneme endpoint identification, individual cue reliance, cue weighting, and classification slope.
Results
The children with a CI used the spectral cues in the /fu/–/su/ contrast less effectively than the children with normal hearing, resulting in poorer phoneme endpoint identification and a shallower classification slope. Performance on the other 3 contrasts did not differ significantly. Adults consistently showed steeper classification slopes than the children, but similar cue-weighting patterns were observed in all 3 groups.
Conclusions
Despite their different auditory input, children with a CI appear to be able to use many acoustic cues effectively in speech perception. Most importantly, children with a CI and normal-hearing children were observed to use similar cue-weighting patterns.
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Copyright © 2010 American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
History
- Received: Nov 20, 2009
- Revised: Mar 31, 2010
- Accepted: Apr 22, 2010
- Published in issue: Dec 1, 2010
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