Contrastive stress production by children with cochlear implants: Accuracy and acoustic characteristics

The aim of this study was to examine the abilities of eight early-implanted children with cochlear implants (mean age 7.1 years) to produce contrastive stress and to compare their use of amplitude, duration, and fundamental frequency, to an age-matched group of children with typical hearing (mean age 6.11 years). A set of 16 utterances were elicited in which the child was required to stress either an adjective or noun in a short phrase. Although both groups of children produced similar proportions of utterances with stress patterns perceived by hearing listeners as accurate, they employed different strategies for achieving contrastive stress.& nbsp;(C) 2021 Author(s). All article content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Automated summary

The study aimed to examine the abilities of early-implanted children with cochlear implants in producing contrastive stress compared to children with typical hearing. Results showed that both groups of children produced similar proportions of accurate stress patterns perceived by hearing listeners, but they employed different strategies for achieving contrastive stress.