Changes in Speech Intelligibility of Korean Hearing-impaired Children in relation to Age at Cochlear Implantation

• Published in: Journal of speech-language & hearing disorders Vol. 28; no. 3; pp. 105 - 112
• Main Authors: Huh, Myung Jin, Kim, In Sup
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 한국언어치료학회 31.07.2019
• Subjects: 교육학; 청각장애아동; 음형대; 인공와우 이식 시기; formant; hearing impaired children; Age of cochlear implantation
• ISSN: 1226-587X; 2671-7158
• DOI: 10.15724/jslhd.2019.28.3.105

Purpose : Hearing-impaired children with cochlear implants (CIs) show improvement in their speech recognition ability over their period of wearing. The purpose of this study is to examine the effect on the children’s speech intelligibility of the age at which they received the implants. Methods : Ten hearing-impaired children who received cochlear implants before or after they reached 6 years of age participated in the study and, as a control group, five normal hearing children also participated. A CSL 4500 by Kay Corp. was used to analyse the phonetic characteristics of Korean phonemes; samples of vowels /ɑ/, /i/ and /u/ of individual groups were collected and the values and rates of F1 and F2 of vowel were analysed. To process resultant data, one-way ANOVAs were conducted. Results : The results indicated that the hearing impaired children who received cochlear implants after 6 years of age were significantly higher in F1 and F2 than children who were deaf and hearing impaired children before 6 years of age. In the vowel /i/, similar results were obtained in F1. The hearing impaired children who had cochlear implants before 6 years of age did not show any significant difference from the vowels of the hearing impaired children. Conclusions : It could be seen that age of cochlear implantation affected hearing-impaired children’s speech intelligibility. It is effective to receive a cochlear implant before 6 years of age to improve the speech clarity of the hearing impaired child. KCI Citation Count: 1