Anticipatory coarticulation in the speech of profoundly hearing-impaired and normally hearing children.

The present study investigated the extent of anticipatory coarticulation in the speech of five 7-year-old and four 10-year-old children with profound prelingual hearing impairment as compared to normally hearing age-matched control subjects. Ten tokens each of the CV syllables [integral of i, integral of u, ti, tu, ki, ku] were elicited from each of the children. Both temporal and spectral (centroid and F2 frequency) analyses were conducted to explore the influence of the following vocalic environment on the initial consonants. The data indicated that the hearing-impaired children displayed evidence of coarticulation on most measures, but they did so to a lesser degree when compared to the normally hearing children. The results are discussed in relation to theories of speech production in the hearing impaired, and their implications for the development of coarticulation are considered.