Graeme Clark Collection
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ItemDesign fundamentals for electrotactile devices: the Tickle Talker case study(Whurr, 1995)Since the work of Gault in the 1920s, the literature has chronicled the development of numerous tactile devices for use by the hearing impaired in improving communication. Devices have been developed to target improvements in both speech perception and speech production. In each development, the inventors have attempted to encode speech information through stimulation of the intact kinaesthetic system of the individual, as a supplement or replacement for speech input available from the damaged auditory pathway.
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ItemPhonetic and phonological changes in the connected speech of children using a cochlear implant( 1995)In excess of 5,000 children, with profound hearing impairment, have received a cochlear implant hearing device. Researchers have recently begun to study the speech production skills of these children.1-6 This topic is of interest because the speech of young prelingually or postlingually deaf children is in a constant state of development. The effectiveness of the implant, therefore, must be measured in its ability to provide enough auditory information for the child to develop intelligible speech. This is in addition to the maintenance of intelligible speech in the case of older postlingually deaf children or adults. The aim of the present study was to investigate some characteristics of the connected speech of a selected group of children from the University of Melbourne Cochlear Implant Programme. More specifically, the study aimed to determine how these characteristics changed over time. Studies of conversational speech samples are useful in that they do not depend on imitation yet they do reflect the child's everyday communication skills and are sensitive to co-articulatory effects. Analyses performed on the preoperative and postoperative data aimed to detect both the phonetic and phonologic changes in the segmental features of speech. The following questions were addressed: 1) What was the pattern of change in the phonetic inventories from before to after implantation? 2) Was there a difference in the correct production of consonants depending on their position in the word? 3) Did the group performance for correct production of phonemes change significantly from before to after implantation? 4) Did performance change over time for individuals? 5) What were the most common phonologic processes and was there a significant reduction in any of these processes from before to after implantation?
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ItemPotential and limitations of cochlear implants in children( 1995)Multiple-channel cochlear implants have been in use with children and adolescents for 8 years. The speech perception, speech production, and language of many of these children has been investigated in some detail.l-4 There have been many predictions about factors that may affect the performance of children with implants. For instance, it has been suggested that children with a congenital loss of hearing would not have the same potential to benefit from a cochlear implant as those with an acquired loss. Similarly, it has been suggested that younger children are likely to gain more benefit from a cochlear implant because of the effect of various critical ages for language learning.5 As more results have become available, it has been our observation that the performance of any particular child with a cochlear implant does not appear to follow well-defined rules, and that generalizations about the potential of certain groups of children are likely to encounter many exceptions. We now have a large quantity of results for children using cochlear implants, and it may be possible to determine some of the factors that have a significant effect on performance. This paper will attempt to identify some of these factors by reviewing speech perception results for 100 children implanted with the Nucleus 22-channel cochlear prosthesis in Australia and speech perception results for adult patients. This analysis will use an "information processing" model of a child using a cochlear implant. That is, we will assume that a child will benefit from a cochlear implant in terms of speech perception, production, and language development, if he or she receives a maximal amount of auditory information from the environment, and is able to process this information successfully. This model divides potential limiting or predictive factors into those that affect the information presented to the auditory system (eg, implant technology, surviving auditory neurons) and those that affect the processing of this information (eg, development of central auditory pathways, amount and consistency of auditory input).
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ItemA clinical report on speech production of cochlear implant users [Abstract]( 1994)Speech production results are reported for a group of 15 children, adolescents and prelinguistically deafened adults implanted with the 22-electrode cochlear implant. Age at implantation ranged from 5 years to 20 years and implant experience ranged from 1 year to 4 years, 7 months. On a speech intelligibility test using sentences seven implant users improved significantly over time. Mean group performance (n = 11) improved from 18% preoperatively to 43% postoperatively. Similarly on a test of articulation, eight implant users improved significantly over time and the group mean postoperative performance (n = 11) exceeded the preoperative performance (55% compared to 38%). This group effect was significant for consonants and blends but was nonsignificant for vowels. Improvements occurred for front, middle and back consonants, for stops, nasals, fricatives and glides and for voiceless and voiced consonants. Three implant users showed no significant gain on either test. The results suggest complex relationships between speech production performance and sensory information provided by a multichannel implant.
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ItemResults for the Nucleus multiple-electrode cochlear implant in two children [Abstract]( 1988)Two males, 9 years 10 months (CHILD 1) and 5 years 5 months (CHILD 2) at time of surgery, were implanted with the Nucleus multiple-electrode cochlear implant. Both patients were deafened as a result of meningitis in their third year. Assessments of speech perception, speech production and language skills were undertaken at regular intervals, pre and post operatively. For both patients in the audition alone condition, some speech perception post operative scores were significantly higher than pre operative scores and progressive improvements in scores over successive post operative data collection times were seen. Significant differences between the visual alone and auditory-visual condition scores were also observed for CHILD 1 post operatively. Speech production post operative scores were significantly higher than pre operative scores for both patients. The receptive vocabulary scores for both patients improved at a higher rate than that of age-matched normal children. The acquisition of expressive and receptive language skills for CHILD 2 was at a higher rate than that of age-matched children. Differences in the results between the two patients were seen, and this may be related to age and duration of deafness.