Perceptual Development of Nasal Consonants in Children With Normal Hearing and in Children Who Use Cochlear Implants

2013 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 1133-1143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn M. Guillot ◽  
Ralph N. Ohde ◽  
Mark Hedrick
Keyword(s):  
Cochlear Implants ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
Developmental Differences ◽  
Perceptual Cues ◽  
Perceptual Development ◽  
Male Adult ◽  
Place Of Articulation ◽  
Developmental Effects ◽  
C 50 ◽  
Nasal Consonant

Purpose This study was conducted to determine whether the perceptions of nasal consonants in children with normal hearing and children with cochlear implants were predicted by the discontinuity hypothesis. Methods Four groups participated: 8 adults, 8 children with normal hearing (ages 5–7 years), 8 children with normal hearing (ages 3.5–4 years), and 5 children with cochlear implants (ages 5–7 years). Stimuli were 128 nasal consonant + vowel (/m/ /n/ + /i/ /æ/ /u/ /ɑ/) syllables produced by a male adult. Each syllable production was edited into 4 segment types: (a) 50-ms murmur, (b) 25-ms murmur + 25-ms transition, (c) 50-ms transition, and (d) full syllable. Results Developmental effects were observed across listener groups. The children performed better in the 25-ms murmur + 25-ms transition condition, which suggests that they benefit from an integrated perceptual cue. The children wearing cochlear implants performed poorer than children with normal hearing on all segments. Conclusions Developmental differences in perception of nasal consonants were evident. Children wearing cochlear implants showed weaker integration and perception abilities compared to younger children with normal hearing. As predicted by the discontinuity hypothesis, the segment with the spectral discontinuity provided the strongest perceptual cues to place of articulation of nasals in children with normal hearing.

scholarly journals Experiments on Auditory-Visual Perception of Sentences by Users of Unilateral, Bimodal, and Bilateral Cochlear Implants

2016 ◽  
Vol 59 (6) ◽  
pp. 1505-1519 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael F. Dorman ◽  
Julie Liss ◽  
Shuai Wang ◽  
Visar Berisha ◽  
Cimarron Ludwig ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cochlear Implants ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
Relative Strength ◽  
Speech Understanding ◽  
Bilateral Cochlear Implants ◽  
Place Of Articulation ◽  
Percentage Points ◽  
Test Conditions ◽  
Lexical Segmentation

Purpose Five experiments probed auditory-visual (AV) understanding of sentences by users of cochlear implants (CIs). Method Sentence material was presented in auditory (A), visual (V), and AV test conditions to listeners with normal hearing and CI users. Results (a) Most CI users report that most of the time, they have access to both A and V information when listening to speech. (b) CI users did not achieve better scores on a task of speechreading than did listeners with normal hearing. (c) Sentences that are easy to speechread provided 12 percentage points more gain to speech understanding than did sentences that were difficult. (d) Ease of speechreading for sentences is related to phrase familiarity. (e) Users of bimodal CIs benefit from low-frequency acoustic hearing even when V cues are available, and a second CI adds to the benefit of a single CI when V cues are available. (f) V information facilitates lexical segmentation by improving the recognition of the number of syllables produced and the relative strength of these syllables. Conclusions Our data are consistent with the view that V information improves CI users' ability to identify syllables in the acoustic stream and to recognize their relative juxtaposed strengths. Enhanced syllable resolution allows better identification of word onsets, which, when combined with place-of-articulation information from visible consonants, improves lexical access.

Age at Full-Time Use Predicts Language Outcomes Better Than Age of Surgery in Children Who Use Cochlear Implants

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 986-992 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa R. Park ◽  
Erika B. Gagnon ◽  
Erin Thompson ◽  
Kevin D. Brown
Keyword(s):  
Cochlear Implants ◽  
Time Use ◽  
Expressive Language ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Language Outcomes ◽  
Age At Surgery ◽  
Device Placement ◽  
Device Use ◽  
Better Than

Purpose The aims of this study were to (a) determine a metric for describing full-time use (FTU), (b) establish whether age at FTU in children with cochlear implants (CIs) predicts language at 3 years of age better than age at surgery, and (c) describe the extent of FTU and length of time it took to establish FTU in this population. Method This retrospective analysis examined receptive and expressive language outcomes at 3 years of age for 40 children with CIs. Multiple linear regression analyses were run with age at surgery and age at FTU as predictor variables. FTU definitions included 8 hr of device use and 80% of average waking hours for a typically developing child. Descriptive statistics were used to describe the establishment and degree of FTU. Results Although 8 hr of daily wear is typically considered FTU in the literature, the 80% hearing hours percentage metric accounts for more variability in outcomes. For both receptive and expressive language, age at FTU was found to be a better predictor of outcomes than age at surgery. It took an average of 17 months for children in this cohort to establish FTU, and only 52.5% reached this milestone by the time they were 3 years old. Conclusions Children with normal hearing can access spoken language whenever they are awake, and the amount of time young children are awake increases with age. A metric that incorporates the percentage of time that children with CIs have access to sound as compared to their same-aged peers with normal hearing accounts for more variability in outcomes than using an arbitrary number of hours. Although early FTU is not possible without surgery occurring at a young age, device placement does not guarantee use and does not predict language outcomes as well as age at FTU.

scholarly journals Parental and Peer Influences on Physical Activity Among Scottish Adolescents: A Longitudinal Study

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (6) ◽  
pp. 785-793 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna Kirby ◽  
Kate A. Levin ◽  
Jo Inchley
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Longitudinal Study ◽  
Peer Support ◽  
Parental Support ◽  
Strong Predictor ◽  
Developmental Differences ◽  
Peer Influences ◽  
Developmental Effects ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Baseline Physical Activity

Background:This study investigated parental and peer influences on physical activity, examining gender and developmental differences during early-mid adolescence.Methods:A 5-year longitudinal study tracking physical activity (measured by PAQ-C) among adolescents (n = 641) from final year of primary (P7) to fourth year of secondary school (S4). Peer support, peer socializing, parental support, and independent play were assessed. Logistic regression predicted physical activity, by year and gender, in relation to social influences.Results:Boys reported higher physical activity, peer support, paternal support, and independent play than girls. Among both genders, peer, paternal, and maternal support decreased with age, whereas independent play increased. Time with friends was particularly important. Among high socializers (P7), odds of being active were over 3 times those of low socializers [boys: 3.53 (95% CI 1.77, 7.04), girls: 3.27 (95% CI 1.80, 5.92)]. Baseline physical activity was also a strong predictor among early secondary boys (OR 3.90 95% CI 2.10, 7.24) and girls (OR 4.15, 95% CI 2.00, 8.62). Parental support was less important than peer influences; only same-sex parental support remained significant in multivariables models.Conclusions:Parents and peers have important influences on adolescent physical activity. Significant gender and developmental effects are apparent through early-mid adolescence.

scholarly journals Duration measurement of vocants in infants with Cochlear Implants

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paris Binos
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Cochlear Implants ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Speech Intelligibility ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
Hearing Impaired ◽  
Prosodic Feature ◽  
Verbal Skills ◽  
Young Infants

Vocants are precursors to speech and are facially neutral. The presence of these speechlike vocalizations was evident during the precursors to mature phonology called “protophones”. The prosodic feature of duration of the nuclei plays a crucial role in the shift of prelexical to mature speech, since speech intelligibility is closely related to the control of duration. The aim of this work is to determine whether cochlear implants (CIs) positively trigger language acquisition and the development of verbal skills. Recent literature findings are compared and discussed with the performance of two Greek congenitally hearing-impaired infants who were matched with three normal-hearing (NH) infants. This work highlighted an important weakness of the prosodic abilities of young infants with CIs.

scholarly journals Self-Monitoring of Listening Abilities in Normal-Hearing Children, Normal-Hearing Adults, and Children with Cochlear Implants

2012 ◽  
Vol 23 (03) ◽  
pp. 206-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann M. Rothpletz ◽  
Frederic L. Wightman ◽  
Doris J. Kistler
Keyword(s):  
Cochlear Implants ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
Objective Condition ◽  
Self Monitoring ◽  
Subjective Condition ◽  
Adults And Children ◽  
Listening Ability ◽  
Children With Hearing Loss ◽  
Listening Task ◽  
Hearing Children

Background: Self-monitoring has been shown to be an essential skill for various aspects of our lives, including our health, education, and interpersonal relationships. Likewise, the ability to monitor one's speech reception in noisy environments may be a fundamental skill for communication, particularly for those who are often confronted with challenging listening environments, such as students and children with hearing loss. Purpose: The purpose of this project was to determine if normal-hearing children, normal-hearing adults, and children with cochlear implants can monitor their listening ability in noise and recognize when they are not able to perceive spoken messages. Research Design: Participants were administered an Objective-Subjective listening task in which their subjective judgments of their ability to understand sentences from the Coordinate Response Measure corpus presented in speech spectrum noise were compared to their objective performance on the same task. Study Sample: Participants included 41 normal-hearing children, 35 normal-hearing adults, and 10 children with cochlear implants. Data Collection and Analysis: On the Objective-Subjective listening task, the level of the masker noise remained constant at 63 dB SPL, while the level of the target sentences varied over a 12 dB range in a block of trials. Psychometric functions, relating proportion correct (Objective condition) and proportion perceived as intelligible (Subjective condition) to target/masker ratio (T/M), were estimated for each participant. Thresholds were defined as the T/M required to produce 51% correct (Objective condition) and 51% perceived as intelligible (Subjective condition). Discrepancy scores between listeners’ threshold estimates in the Objective and Subjective conditions served as an index of self-monitoring ability. In addition, the normal-hearing children were administered tests of cognitive skills and academic achievement, and results from these measures were compared to findings on the Objective-Subjective listening task. Results: Nearly half of the children with normal hearing significantly overestimated their listening in noise ability on the Objective-Subjective listening task, compared to less than 9% of the adults. There was a significant correlation between age and results on the Objective-Subjective task, indicating that the younger children in the sample (age 7–12 yr) tended to overestimate their listening ability more than the adolescents and adults. Among the children with cochlear implants, eight of the 10 participants significantly overestimated their listening ability (as compared to 13 of the 24 normal-hearing children in the same age range). We did not find a significant relationship between results on the Objective-Subjective listening task and performance on the given measures of academic achievement or intelligence. Conclusions: Findings from this study suggest that many children with normal hearing and children with cochlear implants often fail to recognize when they encounter conditions in which their listening ability is compromised. These results may have practical implications for classroom learning, particularly for children with hearing loss in mainstream settings.

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