Perception and Production Abilities of Question vs. Statement Intonation Patterns in Young Deaf Children with Early

Cochlear Implantation Sangsook Choi, Ioana Barbu, Cynthia Core, James Mahshie

•  Despite successful outcomes in spoken communication resulting from early cochlear implantation of young children with hearing loss, these devices provide significantly impoverished speech information compared to natural sound (Geurts and Wouters, 2001). As a result challenges, remain in many areas, including speech perception in background noise, prosody perception, talker identification, perception of emotions, and music perception (Caroll and Zeng, 2007; Chang et al., 2006; Cullington and Zeng, 2011; Peng et al., 2004; Fu et al., 2005; Nakata et al., 2012; Lim and Roy, 2014).

•  Little research exists studying production and perception of prosody in early-implanted children with cochlear implants (CIs). Because of limited F0 information conveyed by CIs, there is particular interest in the impact of CIs on intonation perception and production. 

•  The aim of the present study was to describe and compare the ability of normal hearing (NHC) and cochlear implanted children (CIC) to auditorily perceive and produce F0 distinctions between question vs. statement intonation patterns.

METHODSParticipants•  Age matched 9 NHC and 9 CIC between 3 to 4 years of age.•  Mean age of first implantation was 15 months (SD=3.99 mos). •  Mean duration of CI use was 29 months. •  No children exhibited cognitive and developmental concerns. 

Table 1. Participant Characteristics

ProceduresIntonation perception task•  The children’s ability to perceive intonation patterns was based on an

imitation task. •  The children were asked to imitate recordings of the words, “Who” and “How”

produced by a single female speaker with rising intonation and “Who” and “How” with falling intonation.

•  The children’s imitations were recorded and were subsequently audited by 3 adult hearing listeners who judged the imitation as produced with a rising or falling pattern. Comparison of the pattern used in the stimuli with the pattern heard by the child resulted in a proportion correct scores for imitation of intonation patterns.

Table 2. Acoustic Characteristics of Perception Stimuli.

Figure 2. Hand puppet play

Figure 1. F0 Contours of perception words, “Who” with rising F0 on the left “Who” with non rising F0 on the right. Intonation production task•  The child was prompted to produce a particular form of utterance utilizing a

hand puppet named Bo and a variety of food toys. For example, a question or statement was elicited by the examiner stating “Ask Bo if he would like to eat an apple.” versus “Tell Bo that you like apples.” Elicited statements and questions were digitally recorded for subsequent acoustic measure of F0. See Figure 2 for illustration.

F0 Measures:•  The final two syllables of the utterance were segmented, and the beginning

and end of each vocalic nucleus (defined as vowels plus sonorant consonants) was marked by examining both the waveform and spectrogram.

•  Mean F0, minimum F0 and Maximum F0 of the segmented vocalic nuclei were automatically extracted using Praat software Version 5.3.51 (Boersma and Weenink, 2013).

•  Undefined and spurious F0 values were corrected by manually measuring cycle-by-cycle F0.

•  F0 range in semitones was calculated:12*(log2(f0 max) - log2(f0 min))•  F0 slope was calculated: slope = (f0range in octave) / (time distance b/w f0

max and f0 min)

Figure 3. F0 analysis using Praat

BACKGROUND

RESULTS•  Overall, no statistically significant group difference (CIC vs. NHC) was found

in perception and production of intonation patterns of questions and statements.

•  Perception results, although not significant (U=61.5, p=.063), showed a large effect size (Cohen’s d=-.0873, NHC with higher perception scores than CIC ).

•  Production results showed no significant group effects (CIC vs. NHC) for questions and for statements in all acoustic measures (mean F0, F0 range in semitones, F0 slope).

•  A significant difference was found in mean F0 changes between the penultimate and final syllables for questions and for statements in both CIC (F=36.86, p<.001)and NHC(F=33.16, p<.001).

•  No significant interactions were found among hearing status (CIC vs NHC) utterance type (question vs. statement), and F0 measures.

Figure 4. Perception Results Figure 5. Production Results

•  Despite limited encoding of F0 information in current CI technology, early implanted deaf children with CIs appear to produce intonation patterns comparable to their hearing peers.

•  The perception results are somewhat inconclusive with the limited statistical power due to small sample size.

•  This finding differs from previous studies suggesting that poorer perception and production of intonation patterns by CIC compared to NHC.

•  Compared to previous research, the CIC in the present study had earlier implantation, which might, in part, be a factor in the present findings.

•  It is unclear how CIC learn to produce discernable intonation patterns (i.e., rising vs. falling F0 contours) between questions and statements without direct access to F0 information.

•  Pitch information that is represented in temporal fluctuations in the envelope that are provided by the implant that could explain how children are able to obtain limited F0 information through their devices.

•  The present study findings suggest that auditory perception alone does not account for the intonation production ability comparable to that of NHC. The visual and linguistic factors might contribute to production accuracy.

DISCUSSION

Acknowledgements. The contents of this poster were developed under a grant from the National Institute on Disability, Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR grant H133E80006 & NIDILRR grant H133G120272). 

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