title: Use of acoustic cues by children with cochlear implants.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  This study examined the use of different acoustic cues in auditory perception of consonant and vowel contrasts by profoundly deaf children with a cochlear implant (CI) in comparison to age-matched children and young adults with normal hearing.
  
  
  METHODS
  A speech sound categorization task in an XAB format was administered to 15 children ages 5-6 with a CI (mean age at implant: 1;8 [years;months]), 20 normal-hearing age-matched children, and 21 normal-hearing adults. Four contrasts were examined: //-/a/, /i/-/i/, /bu/-/pu/, and /fu/-/su/. Measures included phoneme endpoint identification, individual cue reliance, cue weighting, and classification slope.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The children with a CI used the spectral cues in the /fu/-/su/ contrast less effectively than the children with normal hearing, resulting in poorer phoneme endpoint identification and a shallower classification slope. Performance on the other 3 contrasts did not differ significantly. Adults consistently showed steeper classification slopes than the children, but similar cue-weighting patterns were observed in all 3 groups.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Despite their different auditory input, children with a CI appear to be able to use many acoustic cues effectively in speech perception. Most importantly, children with a CI and normal-hearing children were observed to use similar cue-weighting patterns.
authors.affiliation: Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. m.r.giezen@uva.nl
authors.forename: Marcel R
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Giezen
authors.forename: Paola
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Escudero
authors.forename: Anne
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Baker
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D000367:Age Factors; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003054:Cochlear Implants; D003463:Cues; D003638:Deafness / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics; D013065:Speech Intelligibility; D013067:Speech Perception