acoustic analysis of fricatives /s/ and /ʃ/ and affricate /ʧ/ in persian-speaking cochlear-implanted children and normal-hearing peers

Background and aim: hearing-impaired individuals have difficulty comprehending and producing speech sounds. cochlear implantation is used to augment hearing. the present study aims to compare the production of fricatives /s/ and /ʃ/ and affricate /ʧ/ by persianspeaking cochlear-implanted (ci) and normal-hearing (nh) children. methods: fifteen persian-speaking nh children and 15 persian-speaking ci children, matched for age, gender, and general health conditions, were included in the study. the stimuli included two voiceless persian fricatives /s/ and /ʃ/ and one voiceless persian affricate /ʧ/ along with the open front vowel /æ/ in three consonant-vowel (cv), consonant-vowel-consonant (cvc), and vowel-consonant (vc) contexts (/sæ/, /æsæ/, /æs/, /ʃæ/, /æʃæ/, /æʃ/, /ʧæ/, /æʧæ/, /æʧ/). after recording all utterances, praat software was used to measure the friction duration, rise time, and spectral peak of the consonants. results: the ci children could not distinguish between /ʃ/ and /ʧ/ and produced affricate /ʧ/ as an allophone of /ʃ/ (p=0.01). moreover, distinguishing between two fricatives /s/ and /ʃ/ was difficult for both groups. while nh children slightly treated these two sounds differently, the ci group produced fricative /s/ as an allophone of /ʃ/ (p=0.02). the rise time of /ʃ/ was longer in the nh children, except for /ʧæ/, where the ci children had a longer rise time. conclusion: the speech of ci children is different in producing /s/, /ʃ/, and /ʧ/ from their nh peers. the results can help speech therapists, clinical linguists, and application designers focus on speech sounds that are challenging for ci children to produce.