Transformation of Closure Duration in the Speech of Hearing Impaired Children

Abstract

The perceptual effect of modifying the closure duration of plosives in the speech of hearing impaired children was studied. Audio recordings of eight Disyllabic words in Kannada with voiced and unvoiced plosives in the medial position uttered by 40 hearing impaired children and 40 age matched normal children were used as material. Using the SSL package, closure duration was extracted. For transformation, the Closure duration of the hearing impaired children were altered to approximate that of the normal children. Altered and unaltered utterances were audio presented to six judges. From their responses, ihe improvement in intelligibility was calculated. The results indicated that the closure duration was lengthened in the hearing impaired children and correcting it could improve the intelligibility substantially. Other salient observations are also highlighted in the article.