The phonological systems of 40 functional misarticulators, ages 40 to 80 months were examined in terms of the nature and variation of phonetic inventories and phonotactic constraints. It was found that these properties of disordered systems were governed by severe constraints that yielded a typological characterization of such systems along with associated implicational laws. The principles governing disordered systems were also found to parallel closely the principles governing normal first language acquisition. The evidence suggests that at least these properties of disordered systems represent delays in the normal acquisition process and are not otherwise deviant. The assessment and treatment of functional disorders along with the projection of learning patterns can thus appeal to principles governing such phonological systems.

The objective of this study was to compare the connected speech intelligibility of children who use cochlear implants with that of children who have normal hearing. Previous research has shown that speech intelligibility improves from before cochlear implantation to after implantation and that the speech intelligibility of children who use cochlear implants compares favorably with that of children who use conventional hearing aids. However, no research has yet addressed the question of how the speech intelligibility of children who use cochlear implants compares to that of children with normal hearing. In the current study, archival data on connected speech intelligibility from 51 children with cochlear implants were compared with newly collected data from 47 children with normal hearing. Results showed that for children with cochlear implants, greater intelligibility was associated with both increased chronological age and increased duration of cochlear implant use. Consistent with previous studies, children with normal hearing achieved adult-like or near-adult-like intelligibility around the age of 4 years, but a similar peak in intelligibility was not observed for the children who used cochlear implants. On the whole, children with cochlear implants were significantly less intelligible than children with normal hearing, when controlling both for chronological age and for length of auditory experience. These results have implications for the socialization and education of children with cochlear implants, particularly with respect to on-time placement in mainstream educational environments with age peers.

Comparison of patterns of cluster realization from 47 children ranging in age from 3;4 to 6;8 with functional (non-organic) speech disorders with those reported in the literature for normal acquisition reveals that these patterns are essentially the same for both groups. Using a two-level generative phonology for children's independent systems, further analysis of cluster realizations by means of feature geometry and under-specification theory reveals that there are systematic and principled relationships between adult representations of clusters and children's underlying representations and between children's underlying representations and their phonetic representations. With special emphasis on coalescence phenomena, it is suggested that the apparent diversity in children's cluster realizations can be reduced to four constraints on the form of underlying and phonetic representations.

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.

Atypical speech by children with cochlear implants involves both articulation and phonological organization. Although children vary considerably, characteristic patterns emerge. An understanding of these patterns is useful for identifying areas of difficulty and formulating intervention programs.

Qualitative descriptions of the consonant inventories of 12 children who have used cochlear implants for at least 5 years are provided, together with description of sound correspondences between children's systems and the ambient language (English). Productions of English words were elicited in a picture-naming task, and a consonant inventory for each child was determined. Results showed that the consonant inventories of children who use cochlear implants are not simply subsets of the inventory of the ambient language, but rather unique sets of segments that may include consonants not in the ambient inventory. Comparison of the inventories of oral communication users and total communication users revealed qualitative differences between the 2 groups, based on the presence or absence of both English and non-English sound segments. Inventories of oral communication users tended to contain more English segments (e.g., alveolar fricatives, velar stops, velar nasals) than did the inventories of total communication users. Conversely, specific non-English segments, such as uvular stops, tended to occur in the inventories of total communication users more than in inventories of oral communication users. Therefore, a complete understanding of the phonological systems of children who use cochlear implants depends on full accounts of their segment inventories. Such understanding may affect decisions regarding habilitation procedures, insofar as successful acquisition of a linguistic system involves not only the inclusion of all ambient sound segments, but also the exclusion of all nonambient ones.

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Since the early 1980s, the DeVault Otologic Research Laboratory at the Indiana University School of Medicine has been on the forefront of research on speech and language outcomes in children with cochlear implants. This paper highlights work over the last decade that has moved beyond collecting speech and language outcome measures to focus more on investigating the underlying cognitive, social, and linguistic skills that predict speech and language outcomes. This recent work reflects our growing appreciation that early auditory deprivation can affect more than hearing and speech perception. The new directions include research on attention to speech, word learning, phonological development, social development, and neurocognitive processes. We have also expanded our subject populations to include infants and children with additional disabilities