An acoustic study of speech production by French children wearing cochlear implants

International audienceThe aim of this paper is to present an acoustic analysis of the speech produced by deaf children wearing cochlear implants (CI). Most studies describing speech production by CI children show that progression after implantation is rapid and that intelligibility and fluency reach typical norms after few months (Sanchez et al. 2006, Ertmer, 2003, Warner-Czyz, 2010), yet some studies show residual difficulties in speech production affecting some consonant and vowel contrasts, though often with conflicting results. The goal of the present study is to carry out an acoustic analysis of the production of several segmental features by 5 French prelingually deaf CI children aged 5 to 10 years (mean age of implantation: 3;3 years), who are compared to a group of 7 NH children aged 6 to 8 year