Acoustic Analysis of Mandarin Tone Pronunciation in Children with Cochlear Implants

HAN Hui; XIE Jiao

doi:10.3969/j.issn.1672-2922.2025.03.003

Abstract：Objective To report acoustic characteristics of Mandarin tone production in children with cochlear implants for prelingual deafness,with Mandarin as their native language,to evaluate their ability to produce Mandarin tones and to provide guidance for tone rehabilitation training for these children.Methods Tone production samples from children with prelingual deafness who had received unilateral cochlear implantation(n=50)and age-matched children with normal hearing(n=50)were recorded and fundamental frequency data extracted.Tone ellipses were plotted based on three sampling points on the fundamental frequency curve,and metrics such as tone differentiation,tone hit rate,and tone stability were calculated.Results Compared to children with normal hearing,those with cochlear implants showed significantly weaker performance in tone differentiation,tone hit rate and tone stability.For both groups,the hit rates for the second and third tones were significantly lower than those for the first and fourth tones.Among children with cochlear implants,the stability of the second,third,and fourth tones was significantly lower than that of the first tone,although the differences were not statistically significant.Conclusion Children with cochlear implants exhibit acoustic deficiencies in Mandarin tone production.Acoustic analysis based on fundamental frequency data of tone samples can effectively evaluate Mandarin tone production abilities of these children.