The Voice Quality of the Children with Cochlear Implant According to the Time

인공와우 이식시기에 따른 아동의 음질 특성

This study investigates the voice quality including F0, jitter, shimmer, and NHR for the children with cochlear implant (CI group) and those with normal hearing (NH group). The CI group was further classified two sub-groups depending upon the time of surgery (i.e. under four years vs. over four years). Three corner vowels (e.g. /a/, /i/, /u/) with extended vocalization were used and analyzed with Multi-Dimensional Voice Program (Kay Elemetrics, Model 4300). The statistics were made in two independent sample t-test with SPSS 11.5. The results can be summarized as follows: (1) The children with cochlear implanted before 4 years of age had very similar data with the NH group except for the vowel /a/. (2) The children with cochlear implanted after 4 years of age, however, indicated significant differences in Fo (/a/, /i/, /u/), Jitter (/e/), shimmer (/a/, /i/, /u/) and NHR(/a/) in all three vowels. It is concluded that the early CI surgery and the early intervention would be very important to maintain better voice quality.