Consonant-to-Vowel/Vowel-to-Consonant Transitions to Analyze the Speech of Cochlear Implant Users

People with postlingual onset of deafness often present speech production problems even after hearing rehabilitation by cochlear implantation. In this paper, the speech of 20 postlingual (aged between 33 and 78 years old) and 20 healthy control (aged between 31 and 62 years old) German native speakers is analyzed considering acoustic features extracted from Consonant-to-Vowel (CV) and Vowel-to-Consonant (VC) transitions. The transitions are analyzed with reference to the manner of articulation of consonants according to 5 groups: nasals, sibilants, fricatives, voiced stops, and voiceless stops. Automatic classification between cochlear implant (CI) users and healthy speakers shows accuracies of up to 93%93%. Considering CV transitions, it is possible to detect specific features of altered speech of CI users. More features are to be evaluated in the future. A comprehensive evaluation of speech changes of CI users will help in the rehabilitation after deafening.