Han Demin, Zhou Ning, Li Yongxin, Chen Xiuwu, Zhao Xiaoyan, Xu Li
Department of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery, Beijing Tongren Hospital, Beijing Institute of Otorhinolaryngology, Beijing, PR China.
Int J Pediatr Otorhinolaryngol. 2007 Jun;71(6):875-80. doi: 10.1016/j.ijporl.2007.02.008. Epub 2007 Mar 21.
The purpose of the present study was to investigate tone production performance of native Mandarin Chinese speaking children with cochlear implants and to evaluate the effects of age at implantation and duration of implant use on tone production in those children.
Fourteen prelingually deaf children who had received cochlear implantation and 14 age-matched normal-hearing children participated in the study. Both groups were of native Mandarin Chinese speaking children. One hundred and sixty tone tokens were recorded from each of the children. The total of 4480 tokens (160x28) were then used in the tone perception tests in which seven normal-hearing native Mandarin Chinese speaking adults participated.
The tone production of the cochlear implant children showed tremendous individual variability. The group mean performance was 48.4% correct, statistically significantly lower than the group mean performance of 78.0% correct in the normal-hearing controls. The tone confusion matrix analysis revealed that the production of Mandarin tone 2 (the rising tone) was most severely impaired in the cochlear implant children, followed by tone 3 (the low and dipping tone) and tone 4 (the falling tone). The most frequently perceived tone irrespective of the target tone was tone 1 (the high level tone). The tone production performance was negatively correlated with the age at implantation and positively correlated with the duration of implant use.
There is a remarkable deficit in tone production in a majority of native tone language speaking, prelingually deaf children who have received cochlear implants. While an increased duration of implant use might facilitate tone production, the age at implantation appears to have a negative effect on tone production in cochlear implant children. Therefore, early implantation might be beneficial to tone production in prelingually deaf children whose native language is a tone language.
本研究旨在调查母语为汉语普通话的人工耳蜗植入儿童的声调发音表现，并评估植入年龄和植入使用时间对这些儿童声调发音的影响。
14名语前聋儿童接受了人工耳蜗植入，14名年龄匹配的听力正常儿童参与了研究。两组均为母语为汉语普通话的儿童。每个儿童录制160个声调样本。然后，总共4480个样本（160×28）用于声调感知测试，7名母语为汉语普通话的听力正常成年人参与了该测试。
人工耳蜗植入儿童的声调发音表现出极大的个体差异。该组的平均正确率为48.4%，在统计学上显著低于听力正常对照组的平均正确率78.0%。声调混淆矩阵分析显示，人工耳蜗植入儿童的普通话第二声（升调）发音受损最严重，其次是第三声（降调）和第四声（去声）。无论目标声调如何，最常被感知的声调是第一声（高平调）。声调发音表现与植入年龄呈负相关，与植入使用时间呈正相关。
大多数母语为声调语言的语前聋人工耳蜗植入儿童在声调发音方面存在明显缺陷。虽然植入使用时间的增加可能有助于声调发音，但植入年龄似乎对人工耳蜗植入儿童的声调发音有负面影响。因此，早期植入可能有利于母语为声调语言的语前聋儿童的声调发音。
