| Speech Cue Weighting in Children with Hearing Aids |
| Junghwa Bahng |
| Department of Audiology and Speech Pathology, University of Tennessee at Knoxville |
| Correspondence |
Junghwa Bahng ,Tel: +82-70-8680-6933, Fax: +82-2-3453-6618, Email: bahng.jh@gmail.com
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Received: March 3, 2010; Revised: May 31, 2010 Accepted: June 14, 2010. Published online: June 30, 2010. |
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| ABSTRACT |
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The purpose of the current study was to determine the perceptual weights given to cues for fricative place of articulation by children
wearing hearing aids, and whether this differs from children and adults with normal hearing in terms of Developmental Weighting
Shift hypothesis. Ten adults and ten 5 to 7-year-old children with normal hearing, and nine children wearing hearing aids participated.
Two seven-step continua of synthetic CV syllables were constructed, with frication pole varying from /s/ to /∫/ within the continuum, and
appropriate formant transition onset frequency values for /s/ or /∫/ varying across the continua. Results showed that both children and
adults gave more perceptual weight to the frication spectral cue than to the formant transition. The weight given the formant transition
cue was similar for children and adults, and the degree of cue interaction was similar between children and adults. Children wearing
hearing aids did not weight both cues significantly. The results suggest that given these stimuli and analysis methods, children and
adult’s weighting of cues for fricative place of articulation are similar. This pattern of results is not consistent with the Developmental
Weighting Shift hypothesis that suggests children initially focus more on dynamic than static cues for frication perception. Also, the
results of children wearing hearing aids indicated that there were individual differences among hearing impaired children. There were
no relationship between speech cue weighting and individual factors. |
| Key Words:
Developmental weighting shift·Sensorineural hearing loss·Speech cue weighting. |
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