Freeman Valerie, Pisoni David B
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Oklahoma State University, 042 Murray Hall, Stillwater, Oklahoma 74078, USA.
Speech Research Laboratory, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University, 1101 East 10th Street, Bloomington, Indiana 47405, USA.
J Acoust Soc Am. 2017 Aug;142(2):1043. doi: 10.1121/1.4998590.
An important speech-language outcome for deaf people with cochlear implants is speech intelligibility-how well their speech is understood by others, which also affects social functioning. Beyond simply uttering recognizable words, other speech-language skills may affect communicative competence, including rate-matching or converging toward interlocutors' speech rates. This initial report examines speech rate-matching and its relations to intelligibility in 91 prelingually deaf cochlear implant users and 93 typically hearing peers age 3 to 27 years. Live-voice spoken sentences were repeated and later transcribed by multiple hearing listeners. Speech intelligibility was calculated as proportions of words correctly transcribed. For speech rate-matching measures, speech rates (syllables/s) were normalized as percentages faster or slower than examiners' speech rates. Cochlear implant users had slower speech rates, less accurate and less consistent rate-matching, and poorer speech intelligibility than hearing peers. Among cochlear implant users, speech rate and rate-matching were correlated with intelligibility: faster talkers and better rate-matchers were more intelligible. Rate-matching and intelligibility improved during preschool, with cochlear implant users delayed by about a year compared to hearing peers. By school-age, rate-matching and intelligibility were good overall, but delays persisted for many cochlear implant users. Interventions targeting rate-matching skills are therefore warranted in speech-language therapy for this population.
对于使用人工耳蜗的聋人来说，一个重要的言语语言成果是言语可懂度——即他人对他们言语的理解程度，这也会影响社交功能。除了简单地说出可识别的单词外，其他言语语言技能可能会影响沟通能力，包括语速匹配或趋向于对话者的语速。这份初步报告研究了91名语前聋人工耳蜗使用者和93名年龄在3至27岁的听力正常同龄人之间的语速匹配及其与可懂度的关系。现场语音说出的句子被重复，随后由多名听力正常的听众进行转录。言语可懂度通过正确转录单词的比例来计算。对于语速匹配测量，语速（音节/秒）被标准化为比检查者语速快或慢的百分比。人工耳蜗使用者的语速较慢，语速匹配的准确性和一致性较差，言语可懂度也比听力正常的同龄人差。在人工耳蜗使用者中，语速和语速匹配与可懂度相关：说话较快且语速匹配较好的人更易被理解。在学龄前阶段，语速匹配和可懂度有所提高，人工耳蜗使用者比听力正常的同龄人延迟约一年。到学龄期，总体而言语速匹配和可懂度良好，但许多人工耳蜗使用者仍存在延迟。因此，针对这一人群的言语语言治疗有必要开展针对语速匹配技能的干预措施。
