De Clerck Ilke, Verhoeven Jo, Gillis San, Pettinato Michèle, Gillis Steven
Department of Linguistics, CLiPS Computational Linguistics and Psycholinguistics Research Centre, University of Antwerp, Prinstraat 13, Antwerp, Belgium.
Department of Linguistics, CLiPS Computational Linguistics and Psycholinguistics Research Centre, University of Antwerp, Prinstraat 13, Antwerp, Belgium; Division of Language and Communication Science, City University London, Northampton Square, London, UK.
J Commun Disord. 2019 Jul-Aug;80:52-65. doi: 10.1016/j.jcomdis.2019.03.008. Epub 2019 Apr 14.
Normally hearing (NH) infants are able to produce lexical stress in their first words, but congenitally hearing-impaired children with cochlear implants (CI) may find this more challenging, given the limited transmission of spectro-temporal information by the implant. Acoustic research has shown that the acoustic cues to stress in the first words of Dutch-acquiring CI infants are less pronounced (Pettinato, De Clerck, Verhoeven, & Gillis, 2017). The present study investigates how listeners perceive lexical stress in the first words of CI and NH infants. Two research questions are addressed: (1) How successful are CI and NH children in implementing the prosodic cues to prominence? (2) Is the degree of stress in CI and NH words perceived to be similar? The stimuli used in this study are disyllabic words (n = 1089) produced by 9 infants with CI and 9 NH infants acquiring Dutch. The words were presented to adult listeners in a listening experiment, in which they assessed the stress pattern on a continuous visual analogue scale (VAS) which expresses to what extent syllables are perceived as stressed. The results show that listeners perceive typical word stress production in the first words of infants with CI. The words of CI and NH infants were rated in agreement with the target stress pattern as often, and trochaic words were rated more frequently as such than iambic words. Listeners more frequently perceive unstressed syllables in the first words of infants with CI. However, for the words that are perceived to be clearly stressed, the degree of word stress is comparable in the two groups, and both infant groups are perceived to produce more contrast between stressed and unstressed syllables in trochees than in iambs. It is concluded that that acoustic differences between CI and NH infants' stress production are not necessarily perceptually salient.
听力正常（NH）的婴儿能够在其最初说出的单词中产生词汇重音，但先天性听力受损且植入人工耳蜗（CI）的儿童可能会觉得这更具挑战性，因为人工耳蜗对频谱 - 时间信息的传输有限。声学研究表明，在学习荷兰语的植入人工耳蜗的婴儿最初说出的单词中，重音的声学线索不太明显（佩蒂纳托、德克莱克、韦尔霍温 & 吉利斯，2017）。本研究调查了听众如何感知植入人工耳蜗和听力正常的婴儿最初说出的单词中的词汇重音。研究解决了两个问题：（1）植入人工耳蜗和听力正常的儿童在运用韵律线索突出重音方面有多成功？（2）植入人工耳蜗和听力正常的儿童说出的单词的重音程度被认为相似吗？本研究使用的刺激材料是由9名植入人工耳蜗的婴儿和9名学习荷兰语的听力正常的婴儿说出的双音节词（n = 1089）。这些单词在听力实验中呈现给成年听众，他们在连续视觉模拟量表（VAS）上评估重音模式，该量表表示音节在多大程度上被感知为重音。结果表明，听众能感知到植入人工耳蜗的婴儿最初说出的单词中的典型单词重音模式。植入人工耳蜗和听力正常的婴儿说出的单词与目标重音模式的评级一致的频率相同，并且扬抑抑格单词被评为符合目标模式的频率高于抑扬格单词。听众更频繁地感知到植入人工耳蜗的婴儿最初说出的单词中的非重读音节。然而，对于那些被明显感知为重音的单词，两组的单词重音程度相当，并且两组婴儿说出的扬抑抑格单词中重读音节和非重读音节之间的对比度都比抑扬格单词中更大。研究得出的结论是，植入人工耳蜗和听力正常的婴儿在重音产生方面的声学差异不一定在感知上很显著。
