Publication Date

1-1-2010

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

First Advisor

Morris, Sherrill R.

Degree Name

B.S. (Bachelor of Science)

Legacy Department

School of Allied Health and Communicative Disorders

Abstract

This study examines the acoustic vowel space of three children aged 4 to 5 years with varying levels of hearing. One of the children had cochlear implants with a profound unaided hearing loss. One child wore hearing aids with a mild unaided hearing loss. One child had normal hearing. Participants' production of isolated vowels, words, and a sentence were acoustically analyzed using the Speech Filing System program to determine the acoustic distinction between each child's vowels. It was hypothesized that the child with normal hearing would have the largest acoustic vowel space due to her ability to utilize auditory feedback and sufficiently differentiate each vowel category. Unexpectedly the child with the hearing aid exhibited the greatest vowel space across all speech tasks indicating neither normal hearing nor the cochlear implant offered an advantage over hearing aids. The small sample and lack of control of aided hearing levels may have created these unexpected results.

Comments

Includes bibliographical references.

Extent

27 pages

Language

eng

Publisher

Northern Illinois University

Rights Statement

In Copyright

Rights Statement 2

NIU theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from Huskie Commons for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without the written permission of the authors.

Media Type

Text

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