The Vowels Production by Children of 32 Months with Cochlear Implants / 听力学及言语疾病杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To analyze implanted children's production of vowels and to investigate the features of vowels production .Methods Thirty CI children averaged 32 .65 ± 5 .97 months were enrolled in this study .Using 19 Chinese vowels as test materials ,accuracy rates were statistically analyzed to get the difficulty gradient and main error patterns .Results /a/and /e/were the easiest vowels and /üe/,/uai/,/ü/were the most difficult vowels for CI children .From the mouth shape of vowels ,the difficulty gradients from easy to difficult were open -mouths →e-ven-teeth → close-mouths → pursed -mouths .From the structures of vowels ,triphthongs were the most diffi-culty ,while single vowels and diphthongs shared the same difficulty level .High vowel's nasalization ,the deletion of diphthongs and triphthongs ,the separation of diphthongs and triphthongs and the substitution of /o/,/ü/,and /ai/were the main error patterns .Conclusion The difficulty levels of vowels'production for CI children at average age of 31 months are rather obvious .Compared with aided children ,they show some common developmental sequences and error patterns ,but also reflect their own characteristics .When in vowel articulation therapy for little CI children ,we should provide targeted training according to error patterns on the basis of following their sequences of difficulty level to fa-cilitate their efficiency .