title: Hearing impairment and vowel production. A comparison between normally hearing, hearing-aided and cochlear implanted Dutch children.
abstract: This study investigated the acoustic characteristics of the Belgian Standard Dutch vowels in children with hearing impairment and in children with normal hearing. In a balanced experimental design, the 12 vowels of Belgian Standard Dutch were recorded in three groups of children: a group of children with normal hearing, a group with a conventional hearing aid and a group with a cochlear implant. The formants, the surface area of the vowel space and the acoustic differentiation between the vowels were determined. The analyses revealed that many of the vowels in hearing-impaired children showed a reduction of the formant values. This reduction was particularly significant with respect to F2. The size of the vowel space was significantly smaller in the hearing-impaired children. Finally, a smaller acoustic differentiation between the vowels was observed in children with hearing impairment. The results show that even after 5 years of device use, the acoustic characteristics of the vowels in hearing-assisted children remain significantly different as compared to their NH peers.
authors.affiliation: City University London, Division of Language and Communication Science, London, United Kingdom; Flemish Academic Centre (Vlaams Academisch Centrum), Advanced Studies Institute of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts, Brussels, Belgium; University of Antwerp, Department of Linguistics, CLIPS Computational Linguistics and Psycholinguistics, Antwerp, Belgium. Electronic address: jo.verhoeven@city.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Jo
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Verhoeven
authors.affiliation: University of Antwerp, Department of Linguistics, CLIPS Computational Linguistics and Psycholinguistics, Antwerp, Belgium.
authors.forename: Oydis
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Hide
authors.affiliation: University of Antwerp, Institute for Education and Information Sciences, Research Group Edubron, Antwerp, Belgium.
authors.forename: Sven
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: De Maeyer
authors.affiliation: University of Antwerp, Department of Physics, Antwerp, Belgium.
authors.forename: San
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Gillis
authors.affiliation: University of Antwerp, Department of Linguistics, CLIPS Computational Linguistics and Psycholinguistics, Antwerp, Belgium.
authors.forename: Steven
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Gillis
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003054:Cochlear Implants; D012048:Correction of Hearing Impairment; D005260:Female; D006310:Hearing Aids; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics; D012016:Reference Values; D013018:Sound Spectrography; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013062:Speech Articulation Tests; D013065:Speech Intelligibility; D013067:Speech Perception; D013068:Speech Production Measurement
keywords: Hearing impairment; Vowel production