Analysis of Temporal parameters in the Speech of the Children with Hearing Loss

The surge of literature indicates that the to develop more effective speech training procedures for the subjects with hearingloss, it is necessary to study the deviation in their speech from that of the normal-hearing subjects and hence, the analysis ofspeech of the subjects with hearing loss becomes essential. The current investigation aimed at studying the temporalparameters of vowel and consonants in the speech in children with hearing loss. Sixteen bisyllabic words with stopconsonants and vowels, uttered by participants with severe sensorineural hearing loss and age and gender-matched normalhearing participants in the age range of eight to ten years were recorded and the temporal parameters namely vowel duration,closure duration, consonant duration, voice onset time, burst duration, and word duration were analysed acoustically. Resultsof statistical analyses revealed that there were significant differences in vowel duration, voice onset time, closure durationand consonant duration between the participants of two groups. No differences in burst duration were observed between theparticipants of both groups.

Effects of Vowel and Consonant Duration Transformation on the Speech Intelligibility in Children with Hearing Loss

The present study aimed at investigating the effects of transformation of vowel and consonant duration on the intelligibility ofspeech in children with hearing loss. Sixteen bisyllabic words with stop consonants and vowels, uttered by participants withsevere sensorineural hearing loss and normal hearing participants in the age range of eight to ten years were recorded, and thevowel duration and consonant duration were analysed acoustically. Results of statistical analyses revealed that there weresignificant differences in both the vowel duration and consonant duration between the participants of two groups. The meanvalues of both vowel duration and consonant duration of the participants with normal hearing were used to transform (toapproximate the normal values) the vowel and consonant duration (individually and in combination) in the speech of theparticipants with hearing loss. The results of perceptual analysis showed significantly higher speech intelligibility scores forthe transformed words compared to the unaltered words spoken by the children with hearing loss. Combined transformationsresulted in the highest improvement in speech intelligibility compared to the individual transformations of vowel duration andconsonant duration.