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Published on: January 23, 2017
A comparison of vowel productions in prelingually deaf children using cochlear implants, severe hearing-impaired
Nele Baudonck1, K Van Lierde, I Dhooge
1Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Audiologic and Logopaedic Sciences, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium. nele.baudonck@ugent.be
Objective:
The purpose of this study was to compare vowel productions by deaf cochlear implant (CI) children, hearing-impaired hearing aid (HA) children and normal-hearing (NH) children.
Patients And Methods:
73 children [mean age: 9;14 years (years;months)] participated: 40 deaf CI children, 34 moderately to profoundly hearing-impaired HA children and 42 NH children. For the 3 corner vowels [a], [i] and [u], F(1), F(2) and the intrasubject SD were measured using the Praat software. Spectral separation between these vowel formants and vowel space were calculated.
Results:
The significant effects in the CI group all pertain to a higher intrasubject variability in formant values, whereas the significant effects in the HA group all pertain to lower formant values. Both hearing-impaired subgroups showed a tendency toward greater intervowel distances and vowel space.
Conclusion:
Several subtle deviations in the vowel production of deaf CI children and hearing-impaired HA children could be established, using a well-defined acoustic analysis. CI children as well as HA children in this study tended to overarticulate, which hypothetically can be explained by a lack of auditory feedback and an attempt to compensate it by proprioceptive feedback during articulatory maneuvers.
