Speech Of Hearing-impaired Children Research Articles

Rating the overall speech quality of hearing-impaired children by means of comparative judgements

ObjectiveAcoustic measurements have shown that the speech of hearing-impaired (HI) children deviates from the speech of normally hearing (NH) peers. The aim of the present study is to examine whether listeners with varying degrees of experience with (HI) children’s speech perceive a difference in the overall speech quality of seven-year-old NH children and their HI peers who received a device before the age of two. MethodShort speech samples of seven children with NH, seven children with an acoustic hearing aid (HA) and seven children with a cochlear implant (CI) were judged by three groups of listeners (audiologists, primary school teachers and inexperienced listeners) in a comparative judgement task. In this task, listeners compared stimuli in pairs and decided which stimulus sounded better, leading to a ranking of the stimuli according to their overall speech quality. ResultsThe ranking showed that the overall speech quality differed considerably for HI and NH children. The latter group had a significantly higher overall speech quality than HI children. In the group of HI children, children with CI were ranked higher than children with HA. Moreover, length of device use was found to have a significant effect in the group of children with CI: longer device experience led to better ratings. This effect was significantly less strong in HA children. No significant differences were found between the three groups of listeners. ConclusionListeners agree that the speech of NH children sounds better than the speech of HI children. This result indicates that even after almost seven years of device use, the speech of HI children still differs from the speech of NH children. The overall speech quality of CI children was better than that of HA children, and this effect increased with longer device use. No effect of listeners’ experience with (NH and/or HI) children’s speech was established.

Perception of low-pass filtered speech in hearing-impaired children, with and without cochlear dead regions and children with normal hearing

There are reports that adults with high-frequency cochlear dead regions (CDRs) exhibit an enhanced ability to use audible low-frequency acoustic information. This results in better performance of participants with CDRs compared to those without CDRs on tasks where the speech is low-pass filtered with a cutoff frequency near the edge frequency of the CDR (Moore and Vinay 2009). This enhanced ability to use low-frequency information may be related to cortical plasticity induced by the presence of a CDR and may be stronger in children due to maximal plasticity of the central auditory pathways. The aim of this study was to determine if children (aged 7-15 years) with a high-frequency congenital hearing loss and CDRs also show enhanced ability to use low frequency information. Vowel-consonant-vowel nonsense speech stimuli were low-pass filtered at various frequencies, amplified to correct for any hearing loss and presented via headphones. The percentage of correctly identified consonants for each low-pass filtering condition were measured in each ear separately. The performance of children with CDRs was compared against performance of age matched children without CDR, children with normal hearing and against the Speech Intelligibility Index prediction. Preliminary data do not support the hypothesis that children with high-frequency CDRs use low-frequency information more effectively than their no-CDR counterparts or normal hearing children.

Home-based Early Intervention on Auditory and Speech Development in Mandarin-speaking Deaf Infants and Toddlers with Chronological Aged 7-24 Months.

Background:Early auditory and speech development in home-based early intervention of infants and toddlers with hearing loss younger than 2 years are still spare in China. This study aimed to observe the development of auditory and speech in deaf infants and toddlers who were fitted with hearing aids and/or received cochlear implantation between the chronological ages of 7–24 months, and analyze the effect of chronological age and recovery time on auditory and speech development in the course of home-based early intervention.Methods:This longitudinal study included 55 hearing impaired children with severe and profound binaural deafness, who were divided into Group A (7–12 months), Group B (13–18 months) and Group C (19–24 months) based on the chronological age. Categories auditory performance (CAP) and speech intelligibility rating scale (SIR) were used to evaluate auditory and speech development at baseline and 3, 6, 9, 12, 18, and 24 months of habilitation. Descriptive statistics were used to describe demographic features and were analyzed by repeated measures analysis of variance.Results:With 24 months of hearing intervention, 78% of the patients were able to understand common phrases and conversation without lip-reading, 96% of the patients were intelligible to a listener. In three groups, children showed the rapid growth of trend features in each period of habilitation. CAP and SIR scores have developed rapidly within 24 months after fitted auxiliary device in Group A, which performed much better auditory and speech abilities than Group B (P < 0.05) and Group C (P < 0.05). Group B achieved better results than Group C, whereas no significant differences were observed between Group B and Group C (P > 0.05).Conclusions:The data suggested the early hearing intervention and home-based habilitation benefit auditory and speech development. Chronological age and recovery time may be major factors for aural verbal outcomes in hearing impaired children. The development of auditory and speech in hearing impaired children may be relatively crucial in the first year's habilitation after fitted with the auxiliary device.

The Role of Prominence and Position in the Acquisition of Codas in the Speech of Hearing-impaired Children

The paper describes the developmental phases in the acquisition of codas in the speech of Hebrew-acquiring hearing-impaired children, with reference to prosodic properties—the prominence (stress) and the position of the syllable hosting the coda. The participants were 10 hearing-impaired children using cochlear implant or conventional hearing aid device, ranging in age from 1;5 to 3;5 years old in their first recording session. Data collection continued until each child completed the acquisition of codas. A prosodic analysis of the phases of coda acquisition reveals a similarity between hearing impaired children and typically developing hearing children acquiring Hebrew, as well as other languages. The results suggest that the position of the syllable in the word (final, penultimate, antepenultimate) plays a major role in the development of codas, whereas stress has no significant effect.

Effect of amplification on the intelligibility of speech in hearing impaired children with and without dead regions in the cochlea

Adults with high-frequency (HF) sensorineural hearing impairment with and without dead regions (DRs) in the cochlea differ in benefit from amplification of speech presented in quiet [Vickers et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 110, 1164-1175 (2001)]. Subjects with HF DRs showed no improvement in speech intelligibility when spectral components of the speech above about 1.7 times the edge frequency of the DR were amplified according to a hearing-aid prescription formula while performance of those without DRs showed improvement with addition of amplified frequency components up to 7.5 kHz. In the present study we tested a group of six children (8-12 years old) who were experienced hearing-aid users with moderate-to-severe sensorineural hearing impairment. The presence of DRs was diagnosed using the TEN(HL) test and “fast” psychophysical tuning curves. Four children showed evidence for DRs (two unilateral and two bilateral). The vowel-consonant-vowel stimuli (65-dB SPL) were subjected to the frequency-gain characteristic prescribed by the DSL prescription formula then low-pass filtered with various cutoff frequencies and presented via headphones. The results showed that in ears with or without DRs the performance improved with increasing cutoff frequency up to 7.5 kHz.

Intonation issues in the speech of hearing impaired children: analysis, transcription and remediation

The focus of this paper is intonation in the speech hearing impaired children. There are inherent difficulties in using existing auditory and acoustic models of transcribing and labelling intonation patterns generally which are discussed in the context of the wider literature as well the author's experimental work with hearing impaired children. Different approaches to measuring fundamental frequency (F0) are discussed (contour, tone-sequence, and autosegmental metrical), and ways of adapting them to represent intonation patterns, contrastive stress, and declination in hearing impaired speakers are considered. The design and the benefits of an intonation training programme carried out by the author using a visual display are also described. Computer based speech training (CBST) systems and the outcomes of other remediation programmes are also discussed. The issues addressed in this paper have useful implications for analysts wishing to capture salient auditory and acoustic information in the speech of hearing impaired children. There are also important clinical applications such as the development of appropriate visual displays and speech training programmes. The author's current research on emerging babbling and speech patterns, and the development of perception and production of stress and intonation in children using cochlear implants are referred to briefly but will be reported in detail elsewhere.

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:Central Auditory Processing Disorders Edited by E. Z. Lasky and J. Katz.Individualised Integration: studies of deaf and partially hearing children and students in ordinary schools and colleges By D. M. C. Dale.The Speech of Hearing‐impaired Children By Andreas Markides.Rehabilitation and Acquired Deafness Edited by William J. Watts.Delivery of Speech‐Language Pathology and Audiology Services By R. M. Flower.Handbook of Clinical Methods in Communication Disorders By W. R. Leith.Treating Language Disorders: for clinicians by clinicians By Harris Winitz.Articulation: assessment and treatment issues Edited by Raymond G. Daniloff.Apraxia of Speech in Adults: the disorder and its management By Robert T. Wertz, Leonard L. La Pointe and John C. Rosenbek.Apraxia of Speech: physiology, acoustics, linguistics, management Edited by J. C. Rosenbek, M. R. McNeil and A. E. Aronson.Disorders of Articulation By Margaret Edwards.Language Learning in School‐Age Children By Geraldine Wallach and Katherine Butler.Language Assessment and Intervention By Elizabeth Wiig and Eleanor Semel.Families of the Developmentally Disabled: a guide to behavioural intervention By Sandra L. Harris.Learning to Speak: a manual for parents By P. R. Zelazo, R. B. Kearsley and J. A. Ungerer.Miller‐Yoder Language Comprehension Test (clinical edition): manual, test plates, and record forms By Jon F. Miller and David E. Yoder.Edinburgh Functional Communication Profile: an observation procedure of the evaluation of disordered communication in elderly patients By C. Skinner, S. Wirz, I. Thompson, and J. Davidson.

The Speech of Hearing-Impaired Children

The Speech of Hearing-Impaired Children

Listeners' impressions of normal-hearing and hearing-impaired children

This study investigated the relationship between speech of hearing-impaired children and listeners' ratings of the speakers' intelligence, achievement, personality, and appearance as a function of whether or not speakers wore hearing aids. Stimuli consisted of (1) tape-recorded speech samples of 12 speakers (4 normal hearing, 4 hard of hearing, and 4 deaf) and (2) two photographic slides of each speaker—one depicting him wearing a hearing aid and another depicting him not wearing a hearing aid. Listeners used a semantic differential scale to rate the stimuli. Analysis shows that there is a systematic increase in “less desirable” ratings with severity of hearing loss and that responses are more negative when the speaker wore a hearing aid.