Preliminary results of the Annual Survey of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children and Youth in Puerto Rico: the first wave.

Preliminary findings are provided from the data collected in Puerto Rico through the Annual Survey of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children and Youth during the 1997-1998 school year. The study was conducted as a part of an initiative to increase participation in the Annual Survey among the deaf and hard of hearing school-age population in Puerto Rico. Demographic, instructional, etiological, audiological, and communication data on 336 deaf and hard of hearing school age children were collected and summarized.

Acoustic-phonetic context considerations for speech recognition testing of hearing-impaired listeners.

Objective: To test for differences in the identification of consonants in carrier sentences versus in VCVs extracted from the sentences, as a function of listeners' hearing-loss categories: moderate, severe, profound. To examine whether pauses inserted in the sentences will facilitate identification of the consonants.

Design: Voiced stops and fricatives were identified by 11 listeners with moderate hearing losses and by 7 listeners with severe losses (between subjects design) for the conditions of consonants in sentences and in VCVs extracted from the sentences (repeated measures).

Temporal and spectral cue use for initial plosive voicing perception by hearing-impaired children and normal-hearing children and adults.

The influence of voice-onset time (VOT) and vowel-onset characteristics on the perception of the voicing contrast for initial plosive consonants was examined for hearing-impaired children, and normal-hearing children and adults. Listeners identified spoken 'DAD'--'TAD' stimuli controlled for VOT and vowel onset characteristics. Only six of 16 hearing-impaired children appropriately identified the exemplar DAD and TAD stimuli used as endpoints of VOT continua.

VCVs vs CVCs for stop/fricative distinctions by hearing-impaired and normal-hearing listeners.

Moderately to profoundly hearing-impaired (n = 30) and normal-hearing (n = 6) listeners identified [p, k, t, f, theta, s] in [symbol; see text], and [symbol; see text]s tokens extracted from spoken sentences. The [symbol; see text]s were also identified in the sentences. The hearing-impaired group distinguished stop/fricative manner more poorly for [symbol; see text] in sentences than when extracted.