Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 21, 2026
Systematic Hearing Performance Evaluation Process for Adolescents with Cochlear Implantation at Early Ages
Published on: March 24, 2023
Speech intelligibility and prosody production in children with cochlear implants
Steven B Chin1, Tonya R Bergeson, Jennifer Phan
1Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, 755 West Michigan Street, Indianapolis, IN 46202, USA. schin@iupui.edu
Objectives:
The purpose of the current study was to examine the relation between speech intelligibility and prosody production in children who use cochlear implants.
Methods:
The Beginner's Intelligibility Test (BIT) and Prosodic Utterance Production (PUP) task were administered to 15 children who use cochlear implants and 10 children with normal hearing. Adult listeners with normal hearing judged the intelligibility of the words in the BIT sentences, identified the PUP sentences as one of four grammatical or emotional moods (i.e., declarative, interrogative, happy, or sad), and rated the PUP sentences according to how well they thought the child conveyed the designated mood.
Results:
Percent correct scores were higher for intelligibility than for prosody and higher for children with normal hearing than for children with cochlear implants. Declarative sentences were most readily identified and received the highest ratings by adult listeners; interrogative sentences were least readily identified and received the lowest ratings. Correlations between intelligibility and all mood identification and rating scores except declarative were not significant.
Discussion:
The findings suggest that the development of speech intelligibility progresses ahead of prosody in both children with cochlear implants and children with normal hearing; however, children with normal hearing still perform better than children with cochlear implants on measures of intelligibility and prosody even after accounting for hearing age. Problems with interrogative intonation may be related to more general restrictions on rising intonation, and the correlation results indicate that intelligibility and sentence intonation may be relatively dissociated at these ages.
Learning Outcomes:
As a result of this activity, readers will be able to describe (1) methods for measuring speech intelligibility and prosody production in children with cochlear implants and children with normal hearing, (2) the differences between children with normal hearing and children with cochlear implants on measures of speech intelligibility and prosody production, and (3) the relations between speech intelligibility and prosody production in children with cochlear implants and children with normal hearing.
