Voice Onset Time of Greek Stops Productions by Greek Children with Cochlear Implants and Normal Hearing.

INTRODUCTION: Research on voice onset time (VOT) production of stops in children with CI versus NH has reported conflicting results. Effects of age and place of articulation on VOT have not been examined for children with CI. The purpose of this study was to examine VOT production by Greek-speaking children with CI in comparison to NH controls, with a focus on the effects of age, type of stimuli, and place of articulation. METHODS: Participants were 24 children with CI aged from 2;8 to 13;3 years and 24 age- and gender-matched children with NH. Words were elicited via a picture-naming task, and nonwords were elicited via a fast mapping procedure. RESULTS: For voiced stops, children with CI showed longer VOT than children with NH, whereas VOT for voiceless stops was similar to that of NH peers. Also, in both voiced and voiceless stops, the VOT differed as a function of age and place of articulation across groups. Differences as a function of stimulus type were only noted for voiced stops across groups. CONCLUSIONS: For the voiced stop consonants, which demand more articulatory effort, VOT production in children with CI was longer than in children with NH. For the voiceless stop consonants, VOT production in children with CI is acquired at a young age.

The Lombard effect in children with cochlear implants: suprasegmental aspects.

Children with cochlear implants (CI) communicate in noisy environments, such as in classrooms, where multiple talkers and reverberation are present. Speakers compensate for noise via the 'Lombard effect'. The present study examined the Lombard effect on the intensity and duration of stressed vowels in the speech of children with Cochlear Implants (CIs) as compared to children with Normal Hearing (NH), focusing on the effects of speech-shaped noise (SSN) and speech-shaped noise with reverberation (SSN+Reverberation). The sample consisted of 7 children with CIs and 7 children with NH, aged 7-12 years. Regarding intensity, a) children with CIs produced stressed vowels with an overall greater intensity across acoustic conditions as compared to NH peers, b) both groups increased their stressed vowel intensity for all vowels from Quiet to both noise conditions, and c) children with NH further increased their intensity when reverberation was added to SSN, esp. for the vowel/u/. Regarding duration, longer stressed vowels were produced by children with CIs as compared to NH in Quiet and SSN conditions but the effect was retained only for the vowels/i/,/o/and/u/when reverberation was added to noise. The SSN+Reverberation condition induced systematic lengthening in stressed vowels for children with NH. Furthermore, although greater intensity and duration ratios of stressed/unstressed syllables were observed for children with NH as compared to CIs in Quiet condition, they diminished with noise. The differences observed across groups have implications for speaking in classroom noise.

Bilateral secondary neurolymphomatosis of the internal auditory canal nerves: a case report.

BACKGROUND: Neurolymphomatosis describes the malignant lymphomatous infiltration of nerves. METHODS: We encountered a unique case of a 47-year-old patient with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma presenting with bilateral sensorineural hearing loss, vestibular dysfunction and bilateral facial nerve palsy. RESULTS: Magnetic resonance imaging demonstrated enhancement and thickening of internal auditory canal nerves bilaterally consistent with neurolymphomatosis. Patient was treated with combined intrathecal chemotherapy and total brain irradiation. CONCLUSIONS: One must always remain vigilant for metastatic disease in patients with sensorineural hearing loss and/or vestibular dysfunction and facial nerve palsy in the context of known malignancy.

Does Lexical Stress Pattern Affect Learning and Producing New Words in Greek for Children With Cochlear Implants?

PURPOSE: Τhe lexical stress pattern (trochaic vs. iambic) may affect various aspects of word learning and word production in children with cochlear implants (CIs). This study aimed to investigate lexical stress effects in word learning by Greek-speaking children with CIs. METHOD: A word learning paradigm, consisting of a word production and a word identification task, was used. A test list of eight pairs of disyllabic nonwords with identical phonological composition and contrasting lexical stress (eight trochaic and eight iambic), along with their referent pictured objects, was constructed and administered to 22 Greek-speaking children with CIs (ages 4;6-12;3 [years;months]) with normal nonverbal IQ and to 22 age-matched controls with normal hearing (NH) and no other difficulties. RESULTS: Overall, children with CIs exhibited lower performance than their hearing peers in all word-learning tasks, regardless of lexical stress pattern. Specifically, they identified significantly fewer words and exhibited significantly lower accuracy in word production than those of the controls. In the group with CIs, lexical stress pattern affected their production of words but not their word identification. Children with CIs showed more accurate production of iambic than trochaic words, a fact attributed to better vowel production. Yet, production of stress was less accurate for iambic than for trochaic words. Μoreover, stress assignment of iambic words was highly correlated with speech and language tests in children with CIs. CONCLUSIONS: Greek children with CIs exhibited lower performance in the word-learning task administered than children with NH did. In addition, the performance of children with CIs indicated a dissociation between the perception and production mechanisms and revealed complex relations between the segmental and prosodic aspects of words. Preliminary findings suggest that stress assignment in iambic words can serve as an indicator of speech and language growth.