The Prosodic Characteristics of Children with Cochlear Implants with Respect to Speech Rate and Intonation Slope

인공와우이식 아동의 운율 특성 - 발화속도와 억양기울기를 중심으로 -

This study investigated speech rate and intonation slope (least square method; F0, quarter-tone) in normal and CI children's utterances. Each group consisted of 12 people and were divided into groups of children with CI operation (before 3;00), children with CI operation (after 3;00), and normal children. Materials are composed of four kinds of grammatical dialogue sentences which are lacking in respect. Given three groups as independent variables and both speech rate and intonation slope as dependent variables, a one-way ANOVA showed that normal children had faster speech rates and steeper intonation slopes than those of the CI group. More specifically, there was a statistically significant speech rate difference between normal and CI children in all of the sentential patterns but imperative form (p<.01). Additionally, F0 and qtone slope observed in sentential final word showed a significant statistical difference between normal and CI children in imperative form (f0: p<.01; q-tone: p<.05).