Speech Characteristics of Children with Hearing Impairment: an Acoustic Analysis

This book is based on the original work and investigates some of acoustic characteristics of Telugu speaking children with hearing impairment using amplification devices. The results indicate a significant difference in the Fundamental frequency (F0), Formant frequencies (F1, F2 and F3), Bandwidths (B1, B2 and B3), Vowel duration and word duration for all the vowels between normal hearing group and hearing aid group, normal hearing group and cochlear implant group and hearing aid group and cochlear implant group. These findings would help in understanding the normal and deviant acoustic characteristics of speech sounds in children with hearing impairment which will help in facilitating the oral production skills by identifying the acoustic parameters that are deviant and also the extent of deviation. The findings acts as a precursor to plan therapy to improve the speech intelligibility and also also helps in determining the effectiveness of the type of listening devices used by the children with hearing impairment.