title: Realisation of voicing by French-speaking CI children after long-term implant use: An acoustic study.
abstract: Studies of speech production in French-speaking cochlear-implanted (CI) children are very scarce. Yet, difficulties in speech production have been shown to impact the intelligibility of these children. The goal of this study is to understand the effect of long-term use of cochlear implant on speech production, and more precisely on the coordination of laryngeal-oral gestures in stop production. The participants were all monolingual French children: 13 6;6- to 10;7-year-old CI children and 20 age-matched normally hearing (NH) children. We compared /p/, /t/, /k/, /b/, /d/ and /g/ in word-initial consonant-vowel sequences, produced in isolation in two different tasks, and we studied the effects of CI use, vowel context, task and age factors (i.e. chronological age, age at implantation and duration of implant use). Statistical analyses show a difference in voicing production between groups for voiceless consonants (shorter Voice Onset Times for CI children), with significance reached only for /k/, but no difference for voiced consonants. Our study indicates that in the long run, use of CI seems to have limited effects on the acquisition of oro-laryngeal coordination needed to produce voicing, except for specific difficulties located on velars. In a follow-up study, further acoustic analyses on vowel and fricative production by the same children reveal more difficulties, which suggest that cochlear implantation impacts frequency-based features (second formant of vowels and spectral moments of fricatives) more than durational cues (voicing).
authors.affiliation: a GIPSA-Lab - CNRS UMR 5216 & Université Grenoble Alpes , Grenoble , France.
authors.forename: Bénédicte
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Grandon
authors.affiliation: a GIPSA-Lab - CNRS UMR 5216 & Université Grenoble Alpes , Grenoble , France.|b Institut Universitaire de France , Paris , France.
authors.forename: Anne
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Vilain
authors.affiliation: c Laboratoire de Psychologie et NeuroCognition - CNRS UMR 5105 & Université Grenoble Alpes , Grenoble , France.
authors.forename: Hélène
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Lœvenbruck
authors.affiliation: d BrainTechLab INSERM UMR 1205 & Université Grenoble Alpes , Grenoble , France.
authors.forename: Sébastien
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Schmerber
authors.affiliation: e INSERM, U1028, CNRS, UMR5292, Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, IMPACT Team, University of Lyon & Service d'ORL , de Chirurgie cervico faciale et d'Audiophonologie, Hôpital Edouard Herriot, Centre Hospitalier et Universitaire de Lyon , Lyon , France.
authors.forename: Eric
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Truy
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D002648:Child; D019929:Cochlear Implantation; D003054:Cochlear Implants; D005260:Female; D005602:France; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics; D013063:Speech Discrimination Tests; D014831:Voice
keywords: Children; VOT; cochlear implant; speech production; stops; voicing