PERCEPTION OF COARTICULATORY CUES IN THE SPEECH OF CHILDREN WITH PROFOUND HEARING-LOSS AND CHILDREN WITH NORMAL-HEARING

Two experiments investigated the perception of coarticulatory cues in the speech of children with profound hearing loss and children with no rmal hearing. To examine anticipatory coarticulation, five repetitions of the syllables [Si Su ti tu ki ku] produced by nine children with h earing loss and nine children with normal hearing were edited to inclu de only the aperiodic consonantal portion. To explore perseveratory co articulation, comparable segments were excised from the syllables [iS uS it ut ik uk]. The stimuli had been analyzed previously in two acous tic studies of coarticulation (Baum & Waldstein, 1991; Waldstein & Bau m, 1991). Ten listeners were presented with the aperiodic segment and were asked to identify the missing vowel. Overall, listeners' vowel id entification was better for the productions by children with normal he aring than for those by children with hearing loss. In anticipatory co ntexts, listeners were able to identify the absent vowel with better-t han-chance accuracy for all productions by both groups except the [i] tokens following [S] produced by children with hearing loss. In persev eratory contexts, identification accuracy was significantly above chan ce for all except the [i] tokens preceding [t] produced by children wi th normal hearing, but only for [u] tokens produced by children with h earing loss. Identification accuracy was better in anticipatory than i n perseveratory contexts for both speaker groups' productions. The pat terning of vowel identification, however, differed for the two speaker groups in anticipatory but not perseveratory contexts.