A comparative study of vocal fundamental frequency in the speech of Japanese and American hearing-impaired children.
The mean fundamental frequency (F(0)) of 10 normal-hearing (NH) and 10 hearing-impaired (HI) Japanese-speaking children were compared to those of 10 NH and 10 HI American English-speaking children. Results indicated no difference in F(0) between the NH groups; while the Japanese-speaking HI children exhibited a significantly higher mean F(0) than English-speaking HI children. The HI Japanese-speaking children also exhibited significantly higher F(0) values than the NH Japanese-speaking children. The influence of a language-specific difference in pitch application was assumed to be a contributing factor to the F(0) differences between the HI groups.
Nakamura
Hiroko
H
University of Tsukuba, Ibaragi, Japan.
Gilbert
Harvey
H
Robb
Michael
M
D002648:Child; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D003638:Deafness / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology / Q000534:rehabilitation; D004519:Education, Special; D005260:Female; D006310:Hearing Aids; D006801:Humans; D007564:Japan; D007802:Language; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology / Q000534:rehabilitation; D008297:Male; D012016:Reference Values; D013018:Sound Spectrography; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D014481:United States