title: Efficacy of the discreteness of voicing category (DOVC) measure for characterizing voicing errors in children with cochlear implants: a report.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  This investigation explored the utility of an acoustic measure, called the discreteness of voicing category (DOVC), in identifying voicing errors in stop consonants produced by children with cochlear implants. Another objective was to examine the perceptual relevance of the DOVC measure and 2 commonly used voice onset time (VOT)-based measures, namely, mean VOT and DeltaVOT (e.g., VOT /t/-VOT /d/).
  
  
  METHODS
  Phonetic transcription and acoustic analyses were carried out on syllable-initial /t / and /d/ produced by 10 children with cochlear implants. The DOVC was calculated as the difference between the shortest VOT value of a voiceless stop and the longest VOT value of a voiced stop across several productions of each.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Phonetic transcription revealed that 4 of the 10 talkers demonstrated atypical voicing distinctions. Acoustic analyses indicated that the DOVC measure identified these same 4 talkers as producing atypical values, whereas mean VOT and DeltaVOT identified a different set of talkers as demonstrating values outside the normal ranges.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Preliminary findings suggest that the DOVC measure corresponded with perceptual data better than the other acoustic measures examined in the present study. Data indicate that the DOVC measure may provide perceptually relevant information concerning the production of voicing distinctions.
authors.affiliation: Callier Center, University of Texas at Dallas, 811 Synergy Park Boulevard, Richardson, TX 75080, USA. snehab@utdallas.edu
authors.forename: Sneha V
authors.initials: SV
authors.lastname: Bharadwaj
authors.forename: Amanda G
authors.initials: AG
authors.lastname: Graves
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D003054:Cochlear Implants / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D014832:Voice Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology; D014833:Voice Quality