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

ABSTRACT

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.