Havy Mélanie, Nazzi Thierry, Bertoncini Josiane
Université Paris Descartes, Sorbonne Paris Cité, Paris, France.
J Commun Disord. 2013 Mar-Apr;46(2):181-92. doi: 10.1016/j.jcomdis.2012.12.002. Epub 2012 Dec 19.
The present study explores phonetic processing in deaf children with cochlear implants (CIs) when they have to learn phonetically similar words. Forty-six 34-to-78-month-old French-speaking deaf children with CIs were tested on 16 different trials. In each trial, they were first trained with two word-object pairings, and then a third object was presented and labeled with one of the familiar words. Children were asked to match one of the previously labeled objects with the third (same-labeled) object. Each pair of words contrasted on either the initial consonant or the first vowel by one or several phonetic features. The results show that deaf children with CIs are able to establish a new referential link between a word and an object. However, their performance is lower than that previously observed in normal-hearing children (NH). In such a situation, they process contrasts involving several phonetic features correctly, but show difficulties with minimal contrasts. The ability to recruit fine phonetic sensitivity during word learning appears to be influenced mainly by duration of implant use, with an overall increase of performance during the 3 years after implantation. There was no chronological age effect, nor age at implantation effect on the quality of processing. Difficulty with minimal contrasts and the absence of any age at implantation effects in this age range are discussed in light of recent studies on lexical development.
After reading this article, the reader will be able to recognize the perceptual skills of children with cochlear implants and distinguish those perceptual features that are difficult for the children to perceive.
本研究探讨了植入人工耳蜗（CI）的聋儿在学习语音相似单词时的语音处理能力。46名34至78个月大的说法语的植入人工耳蜗的聋儿接受了16项不同的测试。在每项测试中，他们首先接受两个单词与物体配对的训练，然后呈现第三个物体并用其中一个熟悉的单词进行标注。要求儿童将之前标注过的物体之一与第三个（相同标注的）物体进行匹配。每对单词在首辅音或第一个元音上通过一个或几个语音特征形成对比。结果表明，植入人工耳蜗的聋儿能够在单词和物体之间建立新的指代联系。然而，他们的表现低于之前在正常听力儿童（NH）中观察到的表现。在这种情况下，他们能正确处理涉及几个语音特征的对比，但在最小对比方面存在困难。在单词学习过程中运用精细语音敏感性的能力似乎主要受人工耳蜗使用时长的影响，在植入后的3年中表现总体有所提高。在处理质量方面，没有发现按年龄顺序排列的年龄效应，也没有发现植入年龄效应。根据最近关于词汇发展的研究，讨论了在这个年龄范围内最小对比的困难以及植入年龄效应的缺失。
阅读本文后，读者将能够识别植入人工耳蜗儿童的感知技能，并区分那些儿童难以感知的感知特征。
