Velopharyngeal control for speech in children with cochlear implants: Nasalance data in Greek VCV disyllables

Cochlear implants (CIs) can lead to improved speech production in at least some children with profound hearing loss. One effect of hearing loss may be poor velopharyngeal control, but data on how CIs improve velopharyngeal function are sparse, especially at the segmental level. This work presents nasometer data for Greek-speaking children with CIs, ages 4–16 years, along with age- and gender-matched normally-hearing (NH) children. Children produced bisyllabic words where medial stop consonants were nasal, voiceless unaspirated, or voiced (which, in Greek, may be prenasalized). The nasal and oral microphone signals from the nasometer were used to demarcate words, consonants, and vowels. Compared to NH peers, children with CIs had greater nasalance in words with medial nasals, but not other consonant types. Comparisons of segmental data for a subset of matched CI–NH pairs showed that nasalance values were fairly similar for CI and NH children for nasals and voiceless stops, but the voiced stop varied across individuals. Whereas the NH children showed reduced nasalization in this word type with age, the children with CIs did not. Analyses based on segmental units should allow a more precise understanding of how cochlear implantation affects velopharyngeal control for speech.