Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research Vol.53 1440-1457 December 2010. doi:10.1044/1092-4388(2010/09-0252)
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Articles

Use of Acoustic Cues by Children With Cochlear Implants

Marcel R. Giezen
Paola Escudero
Anne Baker
Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Contact author: Marcel Giezen, ATW, Spuistraat 210, 1012 VT Amsterdam, the Netherlands. E-mail: m.r.giezen{at}uva.nl.

Purpose: This study examined the use of different acoustic cues in auditory perception of consonant and vowel contrasts by profoundly deaf children with a cochlear implant (CI) in comparison to age-matched children and young adults with normal hearing.

Method: A speech sound categorization task in an XAB format was administered to 15 children ages 5–6 with a CI (mean age at implant: 1;8 [years;months]), 20 normal-hearing age-matched children, and 21 normal-hearing adults. Four contrasts were examined: /a/–/a/, /I/–/i/, /bu/–/pu/, and /fu/–/su/. Measures included phoneme endpoint identification, individual cue reliance, cue weighting, and classification slope.

Results: The children with a CI used the spectral cues in the /fu/–/su/ contrast less effectively than the children with normal hearing, resulting in poorer phoneme endpoint identification and a shallower classification slope. Performance on the other 3 contrasts did not differ significantly. Adults consistently showed steeper classification slopes than the children, but similar cue-weighting patterns were observed in all 3 groups.

Conclusions: Despite their different auditory input, children with a CI appear to be able to use many acoustic cues effectively in speech perception. Most importantly, children with a CI and normal-hearing children were observed to use similar cue-weighting patterns.

KEY WORDS: cochlear implants, speech perception, acoustic cues


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