Objective measurement of prosodic features of speech of hearing-impaired Egyptian children with cochlear implants

Abstract Background Prosody is an important acoustic and linguistic component of speech that greatly contributes to intelligibility. Speech hearing-impaired children shows various deviations from their normal-hearing counterparts due complex physiological mechanisms. Methods Acoustic analysis the prosodic production hearing-impaired, cochlear-implanted, Egyptian children, comparing them a normal group peers, using objective measures. Cases included 30 verbal age 6 10 years cochlear implant devices. The controls within same range. Recording both groups’ samples were done real-time pitch software, generic syllabic rate, intonation stimulability software. Results Significant differences found between two studied groups where decreased range, increased loudness variability, pause duration, rate in children. Conclusion Prosodic with implants could be measured objectively giving numeric profile used as measure monitor progress therapy.