Acquisition of rising intonation in pediatric cochlear implant recipients—a longitudinal study

Abstract

This study examined how cochlear implant (CI) devices can facilitate pediatric users' post-implant acquisition of rising intonation of speech. Participants were 24 prelingually deafened individuals who received their implants from 2.5 to 11 years of age. A target utterance “Are you ready?” was imitatively produced by each of the participants following an examiner's model on an annual basis (up to 10 years post-implantation). Ten normal-hearing listeners perceptually judged these utterances ( N=173) regarding whether the perceived utterances had an intonation of non-rise, partial rise, or full-rise. Listeners also judged each utterance with respect to its intonation contour appropriateness and speech intelligibility. Results indicated that pediatric CI recipients' production of rising intonation was unsatisfactory. Scores of both intonation category and contour appropriateness judgments did not appear to improve beyond 7 years post-implantation. These findings suggest that CI devices can be limited in its facilitation of acquisition of rising intonation. Further studies are required to help us understand the acquisition of speech intonation both in terms of perception and production in this population.