Objective Vocal Quality in Children Using Cochlear Implants: A Multiparameter Approach

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.…”

“…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.…”

“…For instance, the degree of fine-grained variation in synthesised speech is linked to both intelligibility and naturalness ratings [18]. The abovementioned abnormalities found in Baudonck et al [4,15,16] are possible examples of such fine-grained variation involving naturalness. Speech naturalness is a term defined from the listener's perspective as speech that ''sounds normal or natural'' [19] which can be measured preferably by means of perceptually rating scales.…”

Acoustic analysis of voice in children with cochlear implants

“…However, the literature data are contradictory: Coelho [18] found higher values of jitter and shimmer in the children with cochlear implants, while in Baudonck's study [24], the values of these parameters were higher in normal hearing children. Apart from slightly higher values of shimmer parameter in the normal hearing children, the average values of these acoustic parameters were within the normal range.…”