A Comparison of Vowel Productions in Prelingually Deaf Children Using Cochlear Implants, Severe Hearing-Impaired Children Using Conventional Hearing Aids and Normal-Hearing Children

Abstract

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], F₁, F₂ 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.

Nasalance and nasality in children with cochlear implants and children with hearing aids

“…The more complicated 'indirect' hypothesis is that the improved nasalance is an indirect consequence of changes in other speech production parameters. Indeed, previous studies of Baudonck et al [1][2][3] describe improved speech production characteristics in CI children compared to HA children. The consonant production of implanted children is more adequate than the consonant production of HA 70 dBHL children, the voices of the CI children are perceptually judged to be better compared to HA 70 dBHL and HA children show the tendency to a more dorsal articulation of the vowels, which was not seen in the CI children.…”

“…Even though these implants primarily facilitate speech perception, they are also an important aid in the development of several speech production skills, such as overall intelligibility [14][15][16], the production of vowels [2] and consonants [1]. The few studies which focused on resonance characteristics in children using CI [17][18][19][20][21] reported contradictory findings concerning several aspects of nasality or nasalance and conclusions were based on small sample sizes.…”

“…In addition to articulation and voice [1][2][3], the resonance is often a problem in the speech of prelingually deaf children. Gold [4] even stated that the most frequently mentioned problem of deaf speech is related with nasality.…”

Intelligibility of hearing impaired children as judged by their parents: A comparison between children using cochlear implants and children using hearing aids

“…Nonetheless, in previous studies of Baudonck et al [4,[15][16], CI children still showed some abnormalities for several speech parameters including articulation of consonants and vowels and voice quality. Yet, when considering the results of the present study, those abnormalities in CI children do not appear to affect intelligibility seriously, although they were clearly perceptible.…”

Evaluation of Formant Frequencies in Persian Speaking Children with Different Degrees of Hearing Loss

“…Vowels are a critical factor for intelligibility of speech (10)(11)(12) and are involved in both prosodic and segmental features of speech (13,14). The corner vowels ("a," "i," and "u") are more important than other vowels, because they represent a wide range of production situations of the tongue (15). Persian vowels are divided to 2 groups, based on the position of the tongue (front vs. back): front vowels include "i", "e", and "ae", and back vowels include "u", "o", and "a".…”