Point vowel duration in children with hearing aids and cochlear implants at 4 and 5 years of age

Abstract

This work investigates the developmental aspects of the duration of point vowels in children with normal hearing compared with those with hearing aids and cochlear implants at 4 and 5 years of age. Younger children produced longer vowels than older children, and children with hearing loss (HL) produced longer and more variable vowels than their normal hearing peers. In this study, children with hearing aids and cochlear implants did not perform differently from each other. Test age and HL did not interact, indicating parallel but delayed development in children with HL compared with their typically developing peers. Variability was found to be concentrated among the high vowels /, / but not in the low vowels /, /. The broad findings of this work are consistent with previous reports and contribute a detailed description of point vowel duration not in the literature.

Keywords:

• speech timing
• phonetic development
• speech production
• hearing aids
• cochlear implants
• childhood hearing loss

Acknowledgements

Funding was provided by the NIH-NIDCD: R01 DC006681-02, T32 DC00013-30 and P30 DC04662-09. Audiences at the 156th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Miami, FL, and the 2008 Child Phonology Conference in West Lafayette, IN, are gratefully acknowledged. Thanks also to Kanae Nishi, Dawna Lewis, David Ertmer and two anonymous reviewers for criticism of this work.

Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper. The content of this project is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH or NIDCD.

Notes

1. Pure tone averages were calculated by averaging the hearing thresholds obtained at 4 frequencies: 0.5 k, 1 k, 2 k and 4 k Hz.