Caracterização das vocalizações de crianças usuárias de implante coclear

Abstract

The use of cochlear implant by itself does not guarantee the learning of communication skills by deaf children. It is also necessary the planning of teaching strategies for the development of listening and speaking repertories. Although the auditory gain provided by the use of the device is acknowledged, an equivalent progress is not observed in speech acquisition. The present study aimed to assess speech production in children with cochlear implant using tasks that required different stimulus control, in order to identify possible patterns of errors. Participants were six children ranging from eight to eleven years old, with bilateral profound sensorineural hearing loss. After initial assessment of the participants’ receptive and expressive repertories, the study design consisted in teaching the matching-to-sample task (pre-test), teaching of conditional relations between pictures and dictated words (word recognition), and tasks of vocal imitation of dictated words, picture naming and word reading, for the evaluation of vocalizations under different contexts. There were 36 stimuli whose names had all phonemes belonging to Brazilian Portuguese in different occurrences within the word. Stimuli were presented as dictated words, pictures or printed words, depending on the task, and the participant was required to vocalize when presented to each stimulus. The analysis included the phonetic transcription of the recorded vocalizations according to the following criteria: number of syllables, tonic syllable pattern, initial phoneme, final phoneme, production of vowels (analysis considering the word) and production of phonemes and allophones in several instances (analysis considering the phoneme/allophone). The results indicated the existence of patterns in the speech of children with cochlear implants, in the correct speech productions as well as in the errors made. The control exercised by specific characteristics of the word over the vocalizations, and the need for teaching contingencies aimed at the control by minimal unities were emphasized.