Stress and Intonation in the Speech of Hearing-Impaired Hebrew-Speaking Children

This study was designed to compare the acoustic characteristics of lexical stress and intonation in the speech of hearing-impaired Hebrew-speaking children with those of their hearing peers and to relate these characteristics to their intelligibility. Recordings of the speech of 23 hearing-impaired children and 11 matched normally hearing children were subjected to spectrographic analysis and fundamental-frequency measurements and played to a panel of 20 judges. The listeners' judgments of the speech of the hearing-impaired children were supported by the physical analyses. The average fundamental frequency of the hearing-impaired children's speech was significantly higher and the average duration of the vowels significantly longer than for their hearing peers. The relative durations of their stressed to unstressed vowels, however, were similar in the two groups. The findings of the study have implications for training strategies with hearing-impaired children.