Longitudinal formant analysis after cochlear implantation in school-aged children.
BACKGROUND
The purpose of this investigation was to describe the correlation between vocal and hearing development by longitudinal analysis of sound spectrograms, as a basic system for evaluating progress in vocal development.


METHODS
Two school-aged children with prelingual deafness were evaluated diachronically to assess speech perception and speech intelligibility after cochlear implantation. One child had non-syndromic hearing impairment without any known neurological deficit except for hearing loss, while the other had hearing impairment accompanied by mild mental retardation and attention deficit disorder. Their voices were recorded for monthly follow-up after cochlear implantation; these were used for formant analysis and compared with their mother's voice, and alteration of the formant data was also compared with monosyllable speech perception.


RESULTS
Formant analysis demonstrated high concordance was observed between monosyllable speech perception and speech intelligibility. F1-F2 forms of the patients more closely resembled those of their mothers after 1 year's follow-up. The time point at which speech development altered was very similar in both cases although the final outcomes were different.


CONCLUSIONS
Fair improvement of articulation after cochlear implant was demonstrated by the F1-F2 gram analysis. This procedure can be used for data sharing and cooperation between medical and educational specialists.
Kunisue
Kazuya
K
Department of Otolaryngology, Head & Neck Surgery, Okayama University Postgraduate School of Medicine, Dentistry and Pharmaceutical Science, 2-5-1 Shikata-Cho, Okayama 700-8558, Japan.
Fukushima
Kunihiro
K
Nagayasu
Rie
R
Kawasaki
Akihiro
A
Nishizaki
Kazunori
K
D002648:Child; D019929:Cochlear Implantation; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D034381:Hearing Loss / Q000151:congenital* / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000601:surgery* / Q000628:therapy; D006801:Humans; D007804:Language Development; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D013018:Sound Spectrography / Q000379:methods; D013065:Speech Intelligibility / Q000502:physiology; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology; D014831:Voice / Q000502:physiology