Formant Bandwidth and the Articulation Characteristics of Adults with Profound Hearing-Impairment

Abstract

The research was supported by the cost of research funded by Wonkang University in 2014.Objectives: This research looks at the formant bandwidth of people with profound hearingimpairment (HL) compared to people with normal hearing (NH) to see the difference in articulation of vowels. Methods: Forty adults participated in this study: 20 with HL and 20 with NH. They were asked to read 7 Korean vowels five times each (/a, ʌ, o, u, ɯ, i, ɛ/) and their speech was analyzed by Praat to obtain formant bandwidths B1, B2, and B3-B1 is the bandwidth of the first formant, B2 is bandwidth of second formant, and B3 is bandwidth of third formant. Results: The analysis showed that in B1 the HL group had wider formant bandwidth range than the NH group. HL males had a wider range across all vowels, the women in the vowels /i, o, u/ only. Again in B2, HL males had a wider formant bandwidth range in all vowels, while the HL women had a wider range over /a, ʌ, o, ɯ/ only. However, in B3 the NH males had a wider range than HL males in /i, ɯ/, and NH females had a wider range in /ɛ, ʌ/. Conclusion: The results of the formant bandwidth analysis of B1, B2, and B3 show that the NH group could better maintain vocal fold tension than the HL group, and the HL group articulated vowels with the more front and weaker rounded than the normal hearing group.