Emotional Speech Comprehension in Deaf Children with Cochlear Implant

Gaïd Le Maner-Idrissi (1) , Sandrine Le Sourn Bissaoui (1) , Virginie Dardier (1) , Maxime Codet (2) , Nathalie Bonneton-Botté (1) , Fanny Delahaye (1) , Virginie Laval (3) , Marc Aguert (4) , Géraldine Tan-Bescond (2) , Benoit Godey (2)

1 LP3C - EA1285 - Laboratoire de Psychologie : Cognition, Comportement, Communication
2 CHU Pontchaillou [Rennes]
3 CeRCA - Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition et l'Apprentissage
4 UNICAEN - Université de Caen Normandie

Abstract We examined the understanding of emotional speech by deaf children with cochlear implant (CI). Thirty deaf children with CI and 60 typically developing controls (matched on chronological age or hearing age) performed a computerized task featuring emotional prosody, either embedded in a discrepant context or without any context at all. Across the task conditions, the deaf participants with CI scored lower on the prosody-bases responses than their peers matched on chronological age or hearing age. Additionally, we analyzed the effect of age on determining correct prosody-based responses and we found that hearing age was a predictor of the accuracy of prosody-based responses. We discuss these findings with respect to delay in prosody and intermodal processing. Future research should aim to specify the nature of the cognitive processes that would be required to process prosody.

Domains: Psychology; Human health and pathology

Gaïd Le Maner-Idrissi, Sandrine Le Sourn Bissaoui, Virginie Dardier, Maxime Codet, Nathalie Bonneton-Botté, et al.. Emotional Speech Comprehension in Deaf Children with Cochlear Implant. Psychology of Language and Communication, 2020, 24 (1), pp.44-69. ⟨10.2478/plc-2020-0003⟩. ⟨hal-03148079⟩