Temporal characteristics of stop consonants in pediatric cochlear implant users

Objectives: The benefits of Cochlear Implant (CI) in improving speech production abilities in children with hearing impairment can be reflected through acoustic analysis. The primary aim of the study was to investigate the temporal characteristics of stop consonants in Malayalam speaking children using CI. Methods: Twelve children using CI and 12 age- and gender-matched typically developing children (TDC) participated in the study. Simple bisyllabic words with selected target consonants were elicited through a picture naming task and were recorded. Acoustic analysis was carried out using Praat software to derive the acoustic measures - Voice Onset Time (VOT), Burst duration and Closure duration. Results: The results of the study revealed that children using CI differed significantly from TDC for a few target consonants in burst duration and closure duration. However, VOT did not show any significant difference between children using CI and TDC. Conclusion: With early implantation and intensive speech intervention, there is a significant improvement in the speech of children using CI. Yet may have minor deficits which could impact the naturalness of speech. The study highlights the importance of acoustic analyses in identifying these speech errors at a finer level and utilizing the same to evaluate intervention efficacy.