Consonant Recognition Using Coarticulatory Cues in Individuals with Normal Hearing and Sensorineural Hearing Loss

Abstract

Background and Objectives: The study investigated the role of coarticulatory cues in the perception of consonants in Malayalam and its temporal window. It also compared normal hearing individuals and individuals with sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) for their ability to utilize coarticulatory cues for the perception of consonants. Methods: The study used a quasi- experimental post-test only mixed research design. Fifteen normal-hearing individuals and 15 individuals with SNHL who were native speakers of Malayalam participated in the study. The stimuli included consonant-vowel syllables in their original and truncated forms. The forward-gating method was used to generate the truncated tokens. The participants were assessed for their consonant recognition in closed-set conditions. Results: There was a significant difference in the temporal window of the utility of coarticulatory cues across consonants and also between the two groups of participants. Conclusions: In normal-hearing individuals, coarticulatory cues are useful for the recognition of stop consonants, nasals as well as fricatives, with the maximum temporal window of utility seen in nasals. However, individuals with SNHL fail to utilize the available coarticulatory cues to recognize the consonants.