Mao Yitao, Chen Hongsheng, Xie Shumin, Xu Li
Department of Radiology, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, China.
Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, China.
Front Neurosci. 2020 Nov 4;14:592954. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2020.592954. eCollection 2020.
The purpose of the present study was to investigate Mandarin tone production performance of prelingually deafened children with cochlear implants (CIs) using modified acoustic analyses and to evaluate the relationship between demographic factors of those CI children and their tone production ability.
Two hundred seventy-eight prelingually deafened children with CIs and 173 age-matched normal-hearing (NH) children participated in the study. Thirty-six monosyllabic Mandarin Chinese words were recorded from each subject. The fundamental frequencies (F0) were extracted from the tone tokens. Two acoustic measures (i.e., differentiability and hit rate) were computed based on the F0 onset and offset values (i.e., the tone ellipses of the two-dimensional [2D] method) or the F0 onset, midpoint, and offset values (i.e., the tone ellipsoids of the 3D method). The correlations between the acoustic measures as well as between the methods were performed. The relationship between demographic factors and acoustic measures were also explored.
The children with CIs showed significantly poorer performance in tone differentiability and hit rate than the NH children. For both CI and NH groups, performance on the two acoustic measures was highly correlated with each other ( values: 0.895-0.961). The performance between the two methods (i.e., 2D and 3D methods) was also highly correlated ( values: 0.774-0.914). Age at implantation and duration of CI use showed a weak correlation with the scores of acoustic measures under both methods. These two factors jointly accounted for 15.4-18.9% of the total variance of tone production performance.
There were significant deficits in tone production ability in most prelingually deafened children with CIs, even after prolonged use of the devices. The strong correlation between the two methods suggested that the simpler, 2D method seemed to be efficient in acoustic assessment for lexical tones in hearing-impaired children. Age at implantation and especially the duration of CI use were significant, although weak, predictors for tone development in pediatric CI users. Although a large part of tone production ability could not be attributed to these two factors, the results still encourage early implantation and continual CI use for better lexical tone development in Mandarin-speaking pediatric CI users.
本研究旨在使用改良声学分析方法调查人工耳蜗植入（CI）的语前聋儿童的普通话声调产出表现，并评估这些CI儿童的人口统计学因素与其声调产出能力之间的关系。
278名语前聋的CI儿童和173名年龄匹配的听力正常（NH）儿童参与了本研究。从每位受试者处记录36个汉语普通话单音节词。从声调样本中提取基频（F0）。基于F0起始和结束值（即二维[2D]方法的声调椭圆）或F0起始、中点和结束值（即三维[3D]方法的声调椭球）计算两项声学指标（即可区分性和命中率）。对声学指标之间以及方法之间的相关性进行了分析。还探讨了人口统计学因素与声学指标之间的关系。
CI儿童在声调可区分性和命中率方面的表现明显比NH儿童差。对于CI组和NH组，两项声学指标的表现彼此高度相关（相关系数值：0.895 - 0.961）。两种方法（即2D和3D方法）之间的表现也高度相关（相关系数值：0.774 - 0.914）。植入年龄和CI使用时长与两种方法下的声学指标得分呈弱相关。这两个因素共同占声调产出表现总方差的15.4 - 18.9%。
大多数语前聋的CI儿童即使在长期使用该设备后，其声调产出能力仍存在显著缺陷。两种方法之间的强相关性表明，更简单的2D方法在评估听力受损儿童的词汇声调声学方面似乎是有效的。植入年龄，尤其是CI使用时长，对于儿科CI使用者的声调发展是显著但较弱的预测指标。尽管声调产出能力的很大一部分不能归因于这两个因素，但结果仍然鼓励早期植入并持续使用CI，以促进说普通话的儿科CI使用者更好地发展词汇声调。
