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Article published In:
Dutch Journal of Applied Linguistics
Vol. 9:1/2 (2020) ► pp.1–20

Identificeerbaarheid van kinderen met een gehoorbeperking

Een vergelijkende benadering

ORCID logo | Universiteit Antwerpen
| Universiteit Antwerpen
| Universiteit Antwerpen

Studies on the speech and language development of hearing-impaired children often focus on (deviations in) the children’s speech production. However, it is unclear if listeners also perceive differences between the speech of normally hearing and hearing-impaired children. This contribution wants to fill this void by investigating the overall perceived speech quality of both groups. Three groups of listeners (speech and language pathologists, primary school teachers and inexperienced listeners) judged 126 utterances of seven normally hearing children, seven children with an acoustic hearing aid and seven children with a cochlear implant, in a comparative judgment task. All children were approximately seven years old and received, in the case of the hearing-impaired children, their assistive hearing device before the age of two.

The online tool D-PAC was used to administer the comparative judgement task. The listeners compared stimuli in pairs and decided which stimulus sounded best. This method ultimately leads to a ranking in which all stimuli are represented according to their overall perceived speech quality.

The main result is that the speech of normally hearing children was preferred by the listeners. This indicates that, even after several years of device use, the speech quality of hearing-impaired children is perceived as different from that of normally hearing children. Within the group of hearing-impaired children, cochlear implanted children were judged to exhibit higher speech quality than acoustically hearing aided children, especially after a longer device use. The speech quality of the latter group, on the other hand, remained practically stable. Listeners, irrespectively of their degree of experience with (hearing-impaired) children’s speech, completed the task similarly. In other words: the difference between the overall perceived speech quality of normally hearing and hearing-impaired children is salient for all listener groups and they all slightly preferred children with a cochlear implant over children with an acoustic hearing aid.

Keywords: taalverwerving, spraakperceptie, cochleair implantaat, akoestisch hoorapparaat, comparatieve beoordeling
Article outline
  • 1.Inleiding
    • Focus 1: Wel/geen gehoorbeperking
    • Focus 2: Ervaring van de luisteraars
    • Focus 3: Comparatieve aanpak
  • 2.Methode
    • 2.1Stimuli
    • 2.2Luisteraars
    • 2.3Luistertaak
    • 2.4Dataverwerking
    • 2.5Hypothesen
      • Perspectief 1: Globale rangorde van de 126 uitingen
      • Perspectief 2: Analyse van de afzonderlijke paarsgewijze vergelijkingen volgens hoorstatus
      • Extra aandachtspunt: Ervaring van de luisteraars
  • 3.Resultaten
    • 3.1Globale rangorde van de 126 uitingen
    • 3.2Analyse van de afzonderlijke paarsgewijze vergelijkingen volgens hoorstatus
  • 4.Discussie
    • 4.1Duiding van de resultaten
    • 4.2Beperkingen en perspectieven
  • 5.Conclusie
  • Dankwoord
  • Opmerking
  • Bibliografie
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Article language: Dutch

Published online: 24 October 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dujal.18017.boo
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