Imitative Production of Rising Speech Intonation in Pediatric Cochlear Implant Recipients

An article in the Journal of Speech, Language and Hearingexplains that:

Pediatric cochlear implant recipients did not consistently use appropriate intonation contours when imitating a yes–no question. Acoustic properties of speech intonation produced by these individuals were discernible among utterances of different intonation contour types according to normal hearing listeners' perceptual judgments.

The findings delineated the perceptual and acoustic characteristics of speech intonation imitated by prelingually deafened children and young adults with a CI. Future studies should address whether the degraded signals these individuals perceive via a CI contribute to their difficulties with speech intonation production.