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Interspeech 2007, 2007

DOI: 10.21437/interspeech.2007-278

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Suprasegmental aspects of pre-lexical speech in cochlear implanted children

Proceedings article published in 2007 by Oydis Hide, Steven Gillis ORCID, Paul Govaerts
This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

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Preprint: policy unknown
Question mark in circle
Postprint: policy unknown
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Published version: policy unknown

Abstract

This paper investigates suprasegmental features in the pre- lexical speech of congenitally hearing impaired children who received a Nucleus-24 multichannel cochlear implant between 5 and 20 months of age. Bi-syllabic spontaneous babbling productions were analyzed acoustically at different stages in the babbling period. Fundamental frequency, pitch change in terms of direction and degree, and duration were analyzed for each vowel. The results were compared with those of a control group of normally hearing children, and analyzed with respect to length of cochlear implant experience. Few differences were found between the normally hearing children and the cochlear implanted children in terms of suprasegmental aspects, indicating that a cochlear implant provides fundamental improvement already in pre-lexical speech. Nevertheless, differences in pitch variations between the two groups of children at the end of the babbling period may signify a weakness related to the cochlear implant.