Preliminary investigation of the speech productions of children with hearing loss

Abstract

Children with severe hearing loss (HL) generally experience considerable difficulty developing intelligible speech. Most investigators have analyzed individual sound productions (e.g., /f/ as being totally correct or incorrect) without consideration of types of errors or patterns. This study was designed to evaluate phonological deviation patterns (e.g., final consonant deletion, cluster reduction) of children with HL. Fifty object-naming word productions of 12 children between the ages of 4 and 10 years were audio recorded and also transcribed phonetically at the time of utterance. Deviations were analyzed phonologically. This poster will compare the phonological deviation patterns of children by age, assistive listening device (e.g., cochlear implants, hearing aids), and age of speech intervention onset.