A Study of Spoken Language Development in Children with Hearing Impairment: An Examination Using Prosodic Information

2023 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 20K13028
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Review Section: Basic Section 02060:Linguistics-related
• Research Institution: Fukuoka University of Education
• Principal Investigator: KYAN Chikashi 福岡教育大学, 教育学部, 講師 (80827014)
• Project Period (FY): 2020-04-01 – 2024-03-31
• Keywords: 聴覚障害 / 韻律情報

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This study examined the speech-language development of children with hearing impairment by focusing on prosodic information. This study consists of the following two studies. Study (A): An examination of the relationship between the use of nonverbal and verbal prosodic information in children with hearing impairment. Study (B): An examination of the relationship between the ability to utilize prosodic information and language ability in children with hearing impairment. Study (A) showed a significant correlation between the ability to discriminate pitch in musical sounds and the ability to discriminate prosodic information in verbal sounds. Study (B) showed that there were differences in the representation of prosodic information in speech according to sentence comprehension ability.

Free Research Field

聴覚障害教育

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

本研究は、人工内耳装用児の増加や早期からの聴覚活用の可能性の広がりがみられる聴覚障害教育領域において、文字化すると消失してしまう音声言語特有の特徴である韻律情報用いて聴覚障害児の言語発達の特徴を検討したことに学術的意義を見出せる。本研究では対象となった聴覚障害児のサンプルサイズが小さかったため一般化するには制限が生じるが、特に文理解の程度と発話における韻律情報の表出には一定の傾向が示されたことから、今後は聴覚障害児への言語入力の在り方（教師や支援者の音声言語教示等）に着目した研究も検討されるべきであると考えた。