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Spontaneous speech intelligibility: early cochlear implanted children versus their normally hearing peers at seven years of age

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2021

Nathalie BOONEN Open the ORCID record for Nathalie BOONEN [Opens in a new window] ,
Hanne KLOOTS ,
Pietro NURZIA  and
Steven GILLIS Open the ORCID record for Steven GILLIS [Opens in a new window]
Nathalie BOONEN*
Affiliation:
Computational Linguistics, & Psycholinguistics Research Centre, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium E-mail: n.boonen@fontys.nl
Hanne KLOOTS
Affiliation:
Computational Linguistics, & Psycholinguistics Research Centre, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium E-mail: hanne.kloots@uantwerpen.be
Pietro NURZIA
Affiliation:
Computational Linguistics, & Psycholinguistics Research Centre, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium E-mail: pietro.nurzia@uantwerpen.be
Steven GILLIS
Affiliation:
Computational Linguistics, & Psycholinguistics Research Centre, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium E-mail: steven.gillis@uantwerpen.be
*
Corresponding author. Nathalie Boonen, Computational Linguistics, & Psycholinguistics Research Centre, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium. E-mail: n.boonen@fontys.nl
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Abstract

Speaking intelligibly is an important achievement in children’s language development. How far do congenitally severe-to-profound hearing-impaired children who received a cochlear implant (CI) in the first two years of their life advance on the path to intelligibility in comparison to children with typical hearing (NH)? Spontaneous speech samples of children with CI and children with NH were orthographically transcribed by naïve transcribers. The entropy of the transcriptions was computed to analyze their degree of uniformity. The same samples were also rated on a continuous rating scale by another group of adult listeners. The transcriptions of the NH children’s speech were more uniform, i.e., had significantly lower entropy, than those of the CI children, suggesting that the latter group displayed lower intelligibility. This was confirmed by the ratings on the continuous scale. Despite the relatively restricted age ranges, older children reached better intelligibility scores in both groups.

Keywords

intelligibilityspontaneous speechchildren with a cochlear implant
Type
Article
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 50 , Issue 1 , January 2023 , pp. 78 - 103
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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