Identification of stop consonant voicing and place of articulation by listeners with normal hearing and by listeners with mild, moderate, severe, and profound hearing impairments

Abstract

Normal hearing and hearing impaired listeners were asked to identify the voicing and place characteristics of synthetic /bdgptk/ in 2, 4, and 6-choice tasks. For each place of articulation, a VOT continuum was constructed. In general, the boundaries along the VOT continua did not differ for the normal hearing listeners and the listeners with mild and moderate losses. Some listeners with severe impairments and most with profound impairments evidenced abnormal boundaries. In the six-choice task, even when phonetic boundaries were normal, the hearing impaired listeners were more variable in their labeling performance. The identification of place varied inversely with the degree of hearing impairment.