Speech Cue Weighting in Children with Hearing Aids

• Published in: Audiology and Speech Research, 6(1) pp. 30 - 36
• Main Author: 방정화
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 한국청각언어재활학회 01.06.2010
• Subjects: 교육학
• ISSN: 2635-5019; 2635-5027

The purpose of the current study was to determine the perceptual weights given to cues for fricative place of articulation by children wearing hearing aids, and whether this differs from children and adults with normal hearing in terms of Developmental Weighting Shift hypothesis. Ten adults and ten 5 to 7-year-old children with normal hearing, and nine children wearing hearing aids participated. Two seven-step continua of synthetic CV syllables were constructed, with frication pole varying from /s/ to /∫/ within the continuum, and appropriate formant transition onset frequency values for /s/ or /∫/ varying across the continua. Results showed that both children and adults gave more perceptual weight to the frication spectral cue than to the formant transition. The weight given the formant transition cue was similar for children and adults, and the degree of cue interaction was similar between children and adults. Children wearing hearing aids did not weight both cues significantly. The results suggest that given these stimuli and analysis methods, children and adult’s weighting of cues for fricative place of articulation are similar. This pattern of results is not consistent with the Developmental Weighting Shift hypothesis that suggests children initially focus more on dynamic than static cues for frication perception. Also, the results of children wearing hearing aids indicated that there were individual differences among hearing impaired children. There were no relationship between speech cue weighting and individual factors. KCI Citation Count: 0