Abstract
In early word productions, the same types of errors are manifest in children with cochlear implants (CI) as in their normally hearing (NH) peers with respect to consonant clusters. However, the incidence of those types and their longitudinal development have not been examined or quantified in the literature thus far. Furthermore, studies on the spontaneous speech of Dutch-speaking children with CI are missing. This article compares children with CI and NH children with respect to their use of word-initial two-consonant clusters and the frequency of each type of error. The spontaneous speech of nine Dutch-speaking children with CI and an age-matched cohort of NH children was analysed from word-onset up to age seven. Results showed that accuracy and frequency of consonant clusters increases with age and that the age at implant activation is crucial in children with CI. Cross-sectional comparisons showed that some aspects of consonant cluster production in children with CI lag behind that of their NH peers, but that children with CI catch up by age five.
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