Perceptual and acoustic correlates of speech in a bilateral cochlear implant user

Acoustic and perceptual analysis procedures can be thought as useful clinical tools to investigate the speech characteristics of hearing impaired children (HIC). This research aimed at investigating vocal quality and voice dynamics and their acoustic and perceptual correlates in speech samples produced by a three-year ten-month-old male child, who uses bilateral cochlear implant (BCI). The speech samples were collected during a speech therapy session. The perceptual analysis of the vocal quality was based on the Voice Profile Analysis Scheme for Brazilian Portuguese (BP-VPAS - Camargo & Madureira, 2008). The recorded corpus was analyzed by means of the SG Expression Evaluator script (Barbosa, 2009) running on the free software Praat v5.2.10. The measures, which were automatically extracted, comprise the fundamental frequency-f0, first f0 derivative, intensity, spectral slope and long-term mean spectrum. The findings reinforce some correlations between the acoustic and perceptual data, which are relevant to be considered in rehabilitation processes.