Consonant Production Skills in Children with Cochlear Implants and Normal-Hearing Children Aged 3-5 Years

Background and Aim: Consonant development plays a significant role in speech intelligibility which is impaired in children with profound hearing loss. Cochlear implant (CI) can facilitate the development of language comprehension and sound production in children with severe to profound sensorineural hearing loss. This study aimed to compare consonant production skills in children with CI and normal-hearing (NH) children aged 3-5 years. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, participants were 20 children with CI and 20 agematched NH children. The consonant production skills were assessed using the speech intelligibility test in Persian. Results: There were significant differences between CI and NH children (p<0.05), where the highest percentage of correct production in both groups was related to the manner of articulation of stop and nasal consonants. NH children showed less accuracy only in /r/ and /(sic)/, while children with CI were less accurate in /q/, /x/, d(3)./, /l/, /j/, and /r/. Conclusion: Children with CI have lower scores compared to age-matched NH peers, but they have similar consonant production skills.