The Unique Voice Profile of Children With Auditory Brainstem Implants: A Novel Study on Voice Onset Time.

IF 3 3区医学 Q1 AUDIOLOGY & SPEECH-LANGUAGE PATHOLOGY

Language Speech and Hearing Services in Schools Pub Date : 2026-07-02 Epub Date: 2026-06-18 DOI:10.1044/2026_LSHSS-25-00161

İsa Tuncay Batuk, Beyza Demirtaş Yılmaz, Merve Ozbal Batuk, Gonca Sennaroğlu, Levent Sennaroğlu

{"title":"The Unique Voice Profile of Children With Auditory Brainstem Implants: A Novel Study on Voice Onset Time.","authors":"İsa Tuncay Batuk, Beyza Demirtaş Yılmaz, Merve Ozbal Batuk, Gonca Sennaroğlu, Levent Sennaroğlu","doi":"10.1044/2026_LSHSS-25-00161","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Purpose: A limited body of research has investigated temporal speech production parameters in children with auditory brainstem implants (ABIs). This study aimed to compare voice onset time (VOT) production profiles in pediatric users of unilateral cochlear implants (CIs), bilateral CIs, and ABIs with an age-matched normal-hearing (NH) control group.Method: Seventy native Turkish-speaking children (24 with NH, 17 with unilateral CI, 20 with bilateral CI, and nine with ABI) participated in the study. VOT values were acoustically measured from 18 real words containing initial voiced and voiceless stop consonants across different vowel contexts using Praat software.Results: Significant between-group differences were observed for both voiceless and voiced plosives. For voiceless plosives (requiring long-lag aspiration), all implant groups produced significantly shorter VOTs than their NH peers, with the ABI group demonstrating the shortest values. For voiced plosives (requiring true prevoicing), CI users deviated significantly from NH norms; remarkably, however, ABI users successfully achieved prevoicing, showing no significant difference from the NH group. Furthermore, within-group analyses revealed that the implant groups lacked the consistent vowel-driven anticipatory coarticulation observed in the NH group.Conclusions: Severe degradation of the auditory feedback loop affects VOT production differently across auditory device types. Children with ABIs exhibit a unique compensatory profile characterized by preserved temporal accuracy for low-frequency voiced targets but with significant deficits for high-frequency voiceless targets. For speech-language pathologists working in school settings, these findings underscore the necessity of designing device-specific and language-sensitive interventions-particularly targeting precise laryngeal coordination-to support speech intelligibility and phonological development in this clinical population.Supplemental material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.32677827.","PeriodicalId":54326,"journal":{"name":"Language Speech and Hearing Services in Schools","volume":" ","pages":"1017-1032"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0000,"publicationDate":"2026-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Language Speech and Hearing Services in Schools","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1044/2026_LSHSS-25-00161","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2026/6/18 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"AUDIOLOGY & SPEECH-LANGUAGE PATHOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Purpose: A limited body of research has investigated temporal speech production parameters in children with auditory brainstem implants (ABIs). This study aimed to compare voice onset time (VOT) production profiles in pediatric users of unilateral cochlear implants (CIs), bilateral CIs, and ABIs with an age-matched normal-hearing (NH) control group.

Method: Seventy native Turkish-speaking children (24 with NH, 17 with unilateral CI, 20 with bilateral CI, and nine with ABI) participated in the study. VOT values were acoustically measured from 18 real words containing initial voiced and voiceless stop consonants across different vowel contexts using Praat software.

Results: Significant between-group differences were observed for both voiceless and voiced plosives. For voiceless plosives (requiring long-lag aspiration), all implant groups produced significantly shorter VOTs than their NH peers, with the ABI group demonstrating the shortest values. For voiced plosives (requiring true prevoicing), CI users deviated significantly from NH norms; remarkably, however, ABI users successfully achieved prevoicing, showing no significant difference from the NH group. Furthermore, within-group analyses revealed that the implant groups lacked the consistent vowel-driven anticipatory coarticulation observed in the NH group.

Conclusions: Severe degradation of the auditory feedback loop affects VOT production differently across auditory device types. Children with ABIs exhibit a unique compensatory profile characterized by preserved temporal accuracy for low-frequency voiced targets but with significant deficits for high-frequency voiceless targets. For speech-language pathologists working in school settings, these findings underscore the necessity of designing device-specific and language-sensitive interventions-particularly targeting precise laryngeal coordination-to support speech intelligibility and phonological development in this clinical population.

Supplemental material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.32677827.

查看原文本刊更多论文

听觉脑干植入儿童独特的声音轮廓：一项关于声音开始时间的新研究。

目的：一项有限的研究调查了听觉脑干植入物（ABIs）儿童的时间语言产生参数。本研究旨在比较单侧人工耳蜗（CIs）、双侧人工耳蜗（CIs）和ABIs儿童使用者与年龄匹配的正常听力（NH）对照组的声音开始时间（VOT）产生概况。方法：70例母语为土耳其语的儿童（NH 24例，单侧CI 17例，双侧CI 20例，ABI 9例）参与研究。使用Praat软件对18个包含浊音和不浊音顿音的真实单词在不同元音上下文中的VOT值进行声学测量。结果：清音和浊音爆破语组间差异有统计学意义。对于无声炸药（需要长滞后抽吸），所有种植体组产生的vot都明显短于NH组，ABI组的vot最短。对于浊音爆破语（需要真正的前置音），CI用户明显偏离了NH规范；值得注意的是，ABI用户成功地完成了配音，与NH组没有显著差异。此外，组内分析显示，植入组缺乏NH组观察到的一致的元音驱动的预期协同发音。结论：听觉反馈回路的严重退化对不同类型听觉设备VOT产生的影响不同。患有abi的儿童表现出独特的代偿特征，其特征是对低频发声目标的时间准确性保持不变，但对高频不发声目标的时间准确性明显不足。对于在学校工作的语言病理学家来说，这些发现强调了设计特定设备和语言敏感干预的必要性，特别是针对精确的喉部协调，以支持临床人群的语音清晰度和语音发展。补充资料：https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.32677827。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

Language Speech and Hearing Services in Schools Social Sciences-Linguistics and Language

CiteScore

4.40

自引率

12.50%

发文量

165

期刊介绍： Mission: LSHSS publishes peer-reviewed research and other scholarly articles pertaining to the practice of audiology and speech-language pathology in the schools, focusing on children and adolescents. The journal is an international outlet for clinical research and is designed to promote development and analysis of approaches concerning the delivery of services to the school-aged population. LSHSS seeks to advance evidence-based practice by disseminating the results of new studies as well as providing a forum for critical reviews and meta-analyses of previously published work. Scope: The broad field of audiology and speech-language pathology as practiced in schools, including aural rehabilitation; augmentative and alternative communication; childhood apraxia of speech; classroom acoustics; cognitive impairment; craniofacial disorders; fluency disorders; hearing-assistive technology; language disorders; literacy disorders including reading, writing, and spelling; motor speech disorders; speech sound disorders; swallowing, dysphagia, and feeding disorders; voice disorders.