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Voice Onset Time (VOT) In Prelingually Deaf Malay-Speaking Children with Cochlear Implants

Cila Umat, Badrulzaman Abdul Hamid, Azlina Baharudin

This study aimed to investigate the acquisition of the voicing contrast among Malay-speaking prelingually deaf children with cochlear implants (CI) and compared them to a group of normal hearing (NH) children. A total of 15 Malay children with 4 to 6 years duration of cochlear implant experience participated, 5 children in each age group. Secondary data from 15 NH children aged 4 to 6 years old was utilized for comparison. Speech samples were collected using a picture-naming task. There was a significant hearing age effect within the CI group. Comparing the CI and NH groups, a significant group effect was evidenced for all plosives, age effect was significant except for /b/ but there was no significant interaction between the group and age suggesting that in general, the pattern of responses was similar across age for both the study groups. Hearing age significantly correlated with the mean VOTs but not the age at implantation. The results suggest that the ability of these CI children to produce accurately the perceived voicing cues was not at par with the NH children with similar hearing experience. Longer duration of implant experience helps to improve the production of these sounds especially for the velar plosives.