Speech intelligibility and prosody production in children with cochlear implants

ObjectivesThe purpose of the current study was to examine the relation between speech intelligibility and prosody production in children who use cochlear implants.MethodsThe Beginner's Intelligibility Test (BIT) and Prosodic Utterance Production (PUP) task were administered to 15 children who use cochlear implants and 10 children with normal hearing. Adult listeners with normal hearing judged the intelligibility of the words in the BIT sentences, identified the PUP sentences as one of four grammatical or emotional moods (i.e., declarative, interrogative, happy, or sad), and rated the PUP sentences according to how well they thought the child conveyed the designated mood.ResultsPercent correct scores were higher for intelligibility than for prosody and higher for children with normal hearing than for children with cochlear implants. Declarative sentences were most readily identified and received the highest ratings by adult listeners; interrogative sentences were least readily identified and received the lowest ratings. Correlations between intelligibility and all mood identification and rating scores except declarative were not significant.DiscussionThe findings suggest that the development of speech intelligibility progresses ahead of prosody in both children with cochlear implants and children with normal hearing; however, children with normal hearing still perform better than children with cochlear implants on measures of intelligibility and prosody even after accounting for hearing age. Problems with interrogative intonation may be related to more general restrictions on rising intonation, and the correlation results indicate that intelligibility and sentence intonation may be relatively dissociated at these ages.Learning outcomes: As a result of this activity, readers will be able to describe (1) methods for measuring speech intelligibility and prosody production in children with cochlear implants and children with normal hearing, (2) the differences between children with normal hearing and children with cochlear implants on measures of speech intelligibility and prosody production, and (3) the relations between speech intelligibility and prosody production in children with cochlear implants and children with normal hearing.

► We examined speech intelligibility and prosody in children with cochlear implants. ► We compared children with implants and children with normal hearing. ► Both groups performed better on intelligibility than prosody. ► Children with normal hearing did better on both measures than children with implants. ► Intelligibility and prosody production appear to be dissociated at these ages.