A 4-Year Investigation Into Phonetic Inventory Development in Young Cochlear Implant Users

Abstract

Phonetic inventories of 9 children with profoundly impaired hearing who used the 22-electrode cochlear implant (Cochlear Limited) were monitored before implantation and during the first 4 years of implant use. All children were 5 years old or younger at the time of implant. Spontaneous speech samples were collected at regular intervals for each child and analyzed to investigate phone acquisition over the post-implant period. Acquisition was measured using two different criteria. The "targetless" criterion required the child to produce a phonetically recognizable sound spontaneously, and the "target" criterion required the child to produce the phone correctly at least 50% of the time in meaningful words. At 4 years post-implant, 40 out of 44 phones (91 %) had reached the targetless criterion, and 29 phones (66%) had reached the target criterion for 5 or more of the children. Over the time of the study 100% of monophthongs, 63% of diphthongs, and 54% of consonants reached the target criterion. The average time taken for a phone to progress from the targetless to target criterion was 15 months. Overall, the data suggest trends in the order of phone acquisition similar to those of normally hearing children, although the process of acquisition occurred at a slower rate.

Initial Stop Voicing in Bilingual Children With Cochlear Implants and Their Typically Developing Peers With Normal Hearing

“…Blamey, Barry, & Jacq, 2001;Chin, 2003;Ertmer & Goffman, 2011;Flipsen, 2011;Flipsen & Parker, 2008;Ingram, McCartney, & Bunta, 2001;Serry & Blamey, 1999). This is not surprising considering that children with CIs have hearing loss before their implant is activated and because the CI signal differs qualitatively from the sound sensation individuals with NH experience.…”

“…Hearing loss in children could delay phonological development due to limited access to the speech signal and self-hearing (Blamey et al, 2001;Chin, 2003;Serry & Blamey, 1999). Factors known to influence the speech pattern of a child with a CI include age of implantation, duration of device use, the communication mode used after implantation (oral vs. total language), and others (cf.…”

Speech Intelligibility of Pediatric Cochlear Implant Recipients With 7 Years of Device Experience

“…A substantial number of studies have demonstrated that the use of CIs can facilitate the development of speech and language skills of children who are prelingually deaf (born deaf or become deaf before age 3; e.g., Blamey, Barry, & Jacq, 2001;Geers & Tobey, 1995;Serry & Blamey, 1999;Serry, Blamey, & Grogan, 1997;Spencer, Tye-Murray, & Tomblin, 1998;Svirsky, Robbins, Kirk, Pisoni, & Miyamoto, 2000;Tobey, Geers, Brenner, Altuna, & Gabbert, 2003;Tomblin, Spencer, Flock, Tyler, & Gantz, 1999;Tye-Murray & Kirk, 1993;Tye-Murray, Spencer, & Woodworth, 1995). Some investigators have also studied postimplant speech development by applying speech intelligibility measures (e.g., Chin, Finnegan, & Chung, 2001;Chin, Tsai, & Gao, 2003;Miyamoto, Kirk, Robbins, Todd, & Riley, 1996;Moog & Geers, 1999;Osberger, Robbins, Todd, & Riley, 1994;Svirsky & Chin, 2000;Tobey et al, 2003;Tobey & Hasenstab, 1991).…”

Comparison of methods in speech acquisition research

“…The children were all implanted with the Cochlear Ltd 22-electrode cochlear implant between the ages of 2 and 5 years (inclusive) and had a variety of audiological histories and educational experiences (six in auditory/oral settings, three in total communication settings). The development of a near-complete phonetic inventory by these children over the 6 years was documented in Serry and Blamey (1999) and Blamey, Barry and Jacq (2001b). A broad phonetic transcription measured the percentage of monophthongs , diphthongs, singleton consonants, consonant clusters, and whole words produced correctly in each conversational sample.…”

“…Consideration of rate of acquisition may focus on either a measure of correctness or a phonetic inventory (Geers and Tobey, 1992;Serry and Blamey, 1999). An analysis of longitudinal individual data will diOE er from that focussing on cross-sectional data of a larger group (Meyer, Svirsky, Kirk and Miyamoto, 1998).…”