Journal of Communication Disorders 86 (2020) 105996

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Journal of Communication Disorders

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jcomdis

Development of fricative production in French-speaking school-

T
aged children using cochlear implants and children with normal
hearing
Bénédicte Grandona,*,1, Anne Vilaina,b
a
Université Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, Grenoble INP, GIPSA-lab, Grenoble, France
b
Institut Universitaire de France, France

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: In the course of productive phonological development, fricatives are among the last speech
speech production sounds to emerge and to be mastered by children, probably because of the high degree of ar-
cochlear implant ticulatory precision they require or because of difficulties with their perception. Children with
acoustics cochlear implants (CI) face additional difficulties with fricative perception, since high spectral
language acquisition
frequency components are shown to be especially difficult to perceive with a cochlear implant.
Studying fricative production in children with CIs allows to study how the partial transmission of
speech sounds by cochlear implants influences children’s speech production, and therefore to
explore how perceptual abilities influence the late stages of phonological development.
This acoustic study focuses on fricative production at three places of articulation (i.e., /f/, /s/
and /ʃ/), comparing productions by two groups of children (20 children with normal hearing
(NH) vs. 13 children with CIs, all aged 5;7 to 10;7 years), and taking into account their con-
sistency in coarticulation and the stability of their production across two different tasks (word-
repetition and picture-naming). Statistical analyses were carried out by means of linear mixed-
effect models.
The results show that while both groups produce /ʃ/ with similar acoustic characteristics,
between-group differences are found for /f/ and /s/. Furthermore, effects of consonant-vowel
coarticulation are found for children with NH, and are absent for children with CIs. Effects of
chronological age are only found for children with CIs (production in older children with CIs
nearing that of children with NH).
Our study shows that the development of fricative production of five- to 11-year-old children
with CIs is affected by the children’s hearing abilities and late access to auditory information.
These limitations however do not prevent the children from eventually reaching a consistency
similar to that of children with NH, as suggested by the fact that their production is still evolving
during that age span. The results also show that the acquisition of coarticulation strategies can be
impeded by degraded or delayed access to audio.

⁎
Corresponding author at: Gipsa-lab & Université Grenoble Alpes, 1180 Avenue Centrale - BP25, 38031, GRENOBLE Cedex 9, France
E-mail address: BenedicteGrandon@gmail.com (B. Grandon).
1
Present address: Unité INSERM U1253 Imagerie et Cerveau (IBrain) & Université de Tours, 3 Rue des Tanneurs, 37041, TOURS CEDEX 1, France.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcomdis.2020.105996
Received 18 January 2019; Received in revised form 27 March 2020; Accepted 29 March 2020
Available online 27 April 2020
0021-9924/ © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
B. Grandon and A. Vilain Journal of Communication Disorders 86 (2020) 105996

1. Introduction

This study explores how French-speaking children with cochlear implants (CIs) produce fricatives. We compare the acoustic
characteristics of fricatives at three places of articulation produced by children with CIs and by children with normal hearing (NH).
The rationale for this study is manifold. First, it addresses the general lack of studies on fricative production in children with NH
and children with CIs speaking languages other than English. Second, studying the acoustics of the children’s speech production
rather than its perceived accuracy, allows fine-grained analysis of their articulatory control. Furthermore, the acoustic distinction
between fricatives’ places of articulation heavily rely on spectral frequency cues, which are especially challenging for cochlear
implant users and could lead to difficulties in producing intelligible speech. Studying this contrast is therefore particularly relevant to
understand phonological development in that clinical population. It also proposes to broaden the scope of study of fricative pro-
duction, which is often limited to only two places of articulation, namely /s/ and /ʃ/. Adding a third place of articulation, namely /f/,
could help us understand if the /s/-/ʃ/ contrast is specifically difficult to perceive and produce for children with CIs, or if it is fricative
manner which is generally difficult. We chose to study voiceless fricatives only, in order to separate voicing coordination from
fricative production itself. Finally, our study being at the interface of phonetics and phonology, it contributes to the understanding of
how speech production and phonological representation of categories emerge with a partial perception of sounds.

1.1. Perception of fricatives with CIs

With cochlear implants, severe-to-profoundly deaf children and adults are able to access auditory information and to have a better
perception of both environmental and speech sounds than with traditional hearing aids. This better perception of speech sounds in
particular help users of CIs to develop their abilities to use oral communication (Niparko et al., 2010). However, despite the gains in
perception with a CI, difficulties remain for its users in understanding speech, which can turn into difficulties to produce intelligible
speech (i.e., Tye-Murray, Spencer, & Gilbert-Bedia, 1995; Pisoni, 2005; Blamey et al., 2001; Flipsen & Colvard, 2006; Khwaileh &
Flipsen, 2010; Habib, Waltzman, Tajudeen, & Svirsky, 2010). Indeed, the auditory information provided by the cochlear implant does
not provide all the acoustic information available to speakers with NH, and difficulties in perceiving certain types of sounds have
been found, especially in high frequency ranges (Drennan & Rubinstein, 2008; Moore, 2003). Fricatives being high-frequency noise
are particularly difficult to perceive with a CI (Mildner, Šindija, & Vrban Zrinski, 2006; Van Lierde, Vinck, Baudonck, De Vel, &
Dhooge, 2005), when speakers with NH can rely on a full set of acoustic cues, such as location of spectral peak, spectral moments or
amplitude to perceive the places of articulation of fricatives (e.g., for English: Jongman, Wayland, & Wong, 2000). For children with
CIs, both perceiving and discriminating the fricatives’ places of articulation are more challenging than perceiving and discriminating
consonants’ manners of articulation (Bouton, Serniclaes, Bertoncini, & Colé, 2012; Giezen, Escudero, & Baker, 2010). Contrasts
between /f/ and /s/ or between /s/ and /ʃ/ are very hard to perceive by users of CIs (e.g., Lane et al., 2007) and by children in
particular. This leads children with CIs to use disambiguating strategies between fricatives that are different from those of children
with NH (e.g., Giezen et al., 2010; Hedrick, Bahng, Von Hapsburg, & Younger, 2011).

1.2. Emergence of fricatives in children with NH and children with CIs

Fricatives are among the last sounds to emerge in children’s productive sound inventories (e.g., Stoel-Gammon, 1985; Dodd,
Holm, Hua, & Crosbie, 2003; MacLeod, Sutton, Trudeau, & Thordardottir, 2011). In English-speaking children, emergence of liquids
and fricatives occurs between 15 and 24 months of age, later than stops, nasals, and glides (Stoel-Gammon, 1985), and fricatives and
affricates are also among the last speech sounds to be mastered, that is produced consistently with accuracy (Dodd et al., 2003). Both
emergence and mastery of fricatives also depend on their places of articulation. For example, for Quebecois French-speaking children,
/f/ and /s/ in word-initial position tend to emerge first, followed by the other fricatives (first /z/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/ and later /v/) and are
mastered more than 12 months after their emergence in the children’s inventory (MacLeod et al., 2011).
Similarly, emergence and accuracy of consonants in general, and fricatives in particular, in the speech of children with CIs have
received some attention. Firstly, the studies focusing on the emergence of fricatives in the inventories of children with CIs show
similar trends as in children with NH. Fricatives are among the last speech sounds to appear and are less frequent than other
consonants in the inventories of the children with CIs (in English: Warner-Czyz & Davis, 2008; in Quebecois-French: Gaul-Bouchard,
Le Normand, & Cohen, 2007). In a longitudinal study of fricative production following infants monthly until the age of 30 months,
Faes and Gillis (2016) also show that children with CIs have fewer fricatives in their inventories than age-matched peers with NH, a
proportion increasing with chronological age. However, they also show that children with CIs also have similar consonant inventories
when matched in lexicon size with children with NH. Secondly, studies on accuracy (measured as the correct/effective realization of a
target sound without any distortion as judged by expert or naïve listeners, using scores such as the Percentage of Consonants Correct
or PCC) show lower accuracy for fricatives and affricates when compared to stops, nasals, glides or laterals in children with CIs. They
also show that for children with CIs accuracy of all fricatives is lower when compared to children with NH (Gaul-Bouchard et al.,
2007; Kim & Chin, 2008; Warner-Czyz & Davis, 2008), and that their most frequent error types for fricatives are stopping (Baudonck,
Dhooge, D’haeseleer, & Van Lierde, 2010; Gaul-Bouchard et al., 2007; Kim & Chin, 2008), omission (1980; Warner-Czyz & Davis,
2008; Faes & Gillis, 2016), substitution of other fricatives (Baudonck et al., 2010; Dillon, Cleary, Pisoni, & Carter, 2004; Faes & Gillis,
2016) or errors in voicing (Kim & Chin, 2008).
There have been numerous studies of the emergence and mastery of speech sounds in the children’s very first years of life. Yet,
little attention is given to how older children use those speech sounds, and to how speech production develops between early stages of

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B. Grandon and A. Vilain Journal of Communication Disorders 86 (2020) 105996

development and adult production. It is also important to note that most studies on emergence and mastery of speech sounds rely on
scores of accuracy, such as the Percentage of Consonants Correct (or PCC). However, this accuracy is based on a listener’s judgment
and it only evaluates whether a sound can be accepted as belonging to a phonological category. It does not fully mirror the fine-
grained details of those speech sounds or their variability. Using acoustic measures of fricative production provides more refined
information on children’s articulatory control of these sounds, and on sub-phonemic variations.

1.3. Acoustic characteristics of fricatives in children

Fricatives are described as a noise corresponding to an aerodynamic perturbation coming from an obstruction of airflow by
articulators within the vocal tract (Calliope, 1989). Two main measures are proposed as acoustic correlates of this perturbation:
firstly, center of gravity and secondly, standard deviation, corresponding respectively to the concentration and range of the frication
noise (Jongman et al., 2000). Center of gravity is related with place of articulation: /s/ has a high frequency center of gravity,
whereas /ʃ/, which has a longer front cavity, is produced with a lower frequency (Forrest, Weismer, Milenkovic, & Dougall, 1988;
Jongman et al., 2000; Shadle & Mair, 1996). Standard deviation corresponds to the concentration of noise around the center of
gravity, which is related to the sibilant/non-sibilant distinction: the sibilant /s/ and /ʃ/ are produced with lower standard deviation,
which corresponds to a higher concentration of noise around the center of gravity, than non-sibilant /f/, /v/, /θ/ or /ð/ (Johnson,
2003; Jongman et al., 2000; Shadle & Mair, 1996).
There are only a few acoustical studies of fricative production in children with NH, comparing them to adult production (e.g., for
English: Nissen & Fox, 2005; Nittrouer, 1995; Li, Edwards, & Beckman, 2009; Romeo, Hazan, & Pettinato, 2013; for Finnish: Körkkö,
2015). Studies in English and Finnish show that for young children, center of gravity (Körkkö, 2015; Nissen & Fox, 2005; Nittrouer,
1995) and standard deviation (Körkkö, 2015; Li et al., 2009) are different from adult production and across places of articulation.
However, the results differ across studies. Indeed, center of gravity is found to be higher in children than in adults for /ʃ/ by Nissen
and Fox (2005) and for /s/ and /ʃ/ by Nittrouer (2005), and lower in children than in adults for /f/, /θ/ and /s/ by Nissen and Fox
(2005) and for /s/ by Körkkö (2015). Standard deviation of /s/ is found higher in children than in adults (Körkkö, 2015). Finally,
both center of gravity and standard deviation are found to be higher in /s/ than in /ʃ/ in children (Li et al., 2009). Vowel context
affects the spectral characteristics of fricatives, with higher centers of gravity when /s/ and /ʃ/ are followed by /i/ than /u/ or /a/
(Nittrouer, 1995) but lower centers of gravity when /s/ is followed by /u/ than /i/, /y/, /æ/, /ɑ/ in adults and lower in /u/, /æ/, /ɑ/
than /i/ and /y/ in children (Körkkö, 2015).
Effects of age on the acoustic characteristics of fricatives in younger children are contradictory across studies. Centers of gravity
are higher and effects of vowel context are larger in younger children than in older children (i.e., closer to adult production) in
Nittrouer (1995), whereas centers of gravity increase for /f/, /θ/ and /s/ but decrease for /ʃ/ with age in Nissen and Fox (2005), or
centers of gravity decrease and standard deviations increase with age for /s/ in Körkkö (2015). Productions of young children (two-
and three-year-olds) are found to have already developed characteristics of their mother tongue. For example, /s/ is more laminal and
possibly dentalized in Japanese-speaking children but it is alveolar in English-speaking children in the study by Li et al. (2009).
Finally, fricative production in older children is stable between the ages of nine and 14 years in the study by Romeo et al. (2013). This
stability is interpreted as a plateau in the course of acquisition, with a development to adult production occurring after the age of 14
years.
A few studies have addressed the acoustic characteristics of fricatives produced by children with CIs in English (Bharadwaj,
Tobey, Assmann, & Katz, 2006; Uchanski & Geers, 2003; Todd, Edwards, & Litovsky, 2011), and Croatian (Mildner & Liker, 2008).
Difficulties in perceiving certain frequency ranges seem to have repercussions on fricative production for children with CIs. Indeed,
centers of gravity of /s/ and /ʃ/ are less distinct in school-aged children with CIs when compared with children with NH matched in
chronological age or adults (Bharadwaj et al., 2006; Mildner & Liker, 2008; Todd et al., 2011; Uchanski & Geers, 2003), and the
centers of gravity are higher in children with CIs than in children with NH (Mildner & Liker, 2008). There is also higher intra-subject
variability (Bharadwaj et al., 2006) or higher intra-group variability (Uchanski & Geers, 2003) for all spectral moments (i.e., center of
gravity, standard deviation, kurtosis and skewness) in children with CIs. Furthermore, Mildner et al. (2006) show high variability of
acoustic characteristics of fricatives in the first months following implantation, oscillating between the frequency ranges of the
children with NH for /s/ and /ʃ/. Notably, none of these studies in children with CIs provided analyses for the development of
fricative production with chronological age. Some explanations have been suggested for the observed differences. Todd et al. (2011)
show a smaller contrast between /s/ and /ʃ/, both when children with CIs are compared with children with NH matched in
chronological age or in hearing age. This result might be explained by limitations in auditory discrimination or by a similar yet slower
pattern of phonological development in children with CIs. The study by Bharadwaj et al. (2006) indicates that children who produced
their fricatives differently with their implants on vs. off were also the ones who produced a clear distinction between /s/ and /ʃ/
(with implant on). This is interpreted as emphasizing the links between the ability to use auditory feedback during production and the
acoustic quality of phoneme production.
Overall, as is the case for the study of acoustic characteristics of fricative production in children with NH, very little attention is
given to languages other English. Finally, studies in children with CIs mostly focus on the /s/-/ʃ/ contrast, since perceiving and
discriminating these fricatives’ places of articulation has been found to be particularly challenging (e.g., Giezen et al., 2010; Hedrick
et al., 2011). However, it is only assumed that this particular contrast might cause difficulties in children with CIs, without actual
observation of other fricatives. Using three different places of articulation will help us understand if difficulties are only coming from
two fricatives or if all fricatives are affected, indicating that difficulties come from the fricative manner of articulation.

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B. Grandon and A. Vilain Journal of Communication Disorders 86 (2020) 105996

1.4. Aims of the study

Our study explores 1) the production of fricatives /f, s, ʃ/ by French-speaking children with CIs compared with children with NH,
taking into account effects of anticipatory vowel coarticulation (phonetic contexts /i/ vs /u/); 2) the variation in fricative production
between the age of 5 and 11 years in children with CIs and children with NH; 3) the role of age at implantation and hearing age as
predictors of the development of fricative production for the children with CIs; and 4) the stability of speech production and pho-
nological representation through the use of two different tasks.

2. Materials and methods

2.1. Participants

Participants in this study were 20 children with NH (11 girls and 9 boys) and 13 children with CIs (7 girls and 6 boys). All were
monolingual, native speakers of French and had lived in the French Grenoble-Lyon area for several years prior to the recordings. All
children with NH were screened for hearing and language impairments. Children with CIs were recruited through the implantation
centers at local hospitals and they were only included in the study if they did not have known language impairments or additional
disabilities (as declared by their parents at the time of their recruitment). All children gave their oral consent and one parent gave
their written consent. The study was approved by the local ethics committee (CERNI N° 2014-11-18-54).
For the children with NH, chronological age ranged from 5;7 to 10;6 years (mean 7;8, SD 1;6) at the time of the recordings, and
for the children with CIs from 6;6 to 10;7 years (mean 8;2, SD 1;3). A Welch t-test indicated no significant between-group difference
for chronological age: t(28) = -1.03, p = .312. All children with CIs were pre- or peri-linguistically deaf, with an age at diagnosis
ranging from 0;7 to 3;4 years (mean 1;6, SD 0;11). They received a cochlear implant when they were between 1;6 and 6;6 years old
(mean 3;2, SD 1;9) and had been using their implant for 2;2 to 9;1 years (mean 5;3, SD 2;3) at the time of the recordings. All children
with CIs had severe-to-profound bilateral deafness prior to the implantation. Seven children were unilaterally implanted and six were
bilaterally implanted.

2.2. Procedure

2.2.1. Tasks
The children were recorded in two different tasks: a word-repetition task using prerecorded adult models of the words presented
orally and matching pictures, and a picture-naming task based on a subset of the word-list from the word-repetition task, using the
same pictures as in the word-repetition task but without the prerecorded models of the words (only the most frequent words were
used, to facilitate lexical access in the picture-naming task). Our goal was to explore the stability of the phonological representations
in the production of both groups of children. The word-repetition task was designed to question the ability of the children to produce
fricatives matching an acoustic target they had just heard, whereas the picture-naming task was designed to explore their ability to
produce the target sound based on a stored representation of this target sound. All words were presented in isolation and in random
order. Prior to the recordings, all children were instructed that they could stop the experiment at any time. All children were recorded
twice in each task, except for one child, who was only recorded once, as per their wish not to continue. This particular child’s
productions were included in the analyses, since both tasks were completed and no problem was reported. Recording two tokens of
each word in each task only aimed at obtaining more data for each child. The word-repetition task was always preceding the picture-
naming task, so as to make sure that the children knew the words for the picture-naming task, and that lexical access was not an
additional difficulty.

2.2.2. Corpus/stimuli
The corpus was a list of 12 mono-, di-, and tri-syllabic words for the word-repetition task and six mono- and disyllabic words for
the picture-naming task. The word list for each task is given in Appendix A in Supplementary material. In order to have all target
fricatives in similar contexts, we built our own list of words, selected as words known to 5- to 11-year-old children. To our knowledge,
there is no descriptive or normative corpus of child speech in French that we could use to validate the choice of words. However, the
Manulex database of 54 textbooks for children (Lété, Sprenger-Charolles, & Colé, 2004) gives us information about the lexical input
received by school-age children. A query in this database confirms that our list of words is indeed known by first-grade children, as
indicated by a Standard Frequency Index ranging from 37.95 to 61.81 for these words. Finally, the high number of correct words
obtained for each group (see section 2.3.1 below) constitutes a validation of our word-list. The words all had a word-initial con-
sonant-vowel (CV) sequence, with a voiceless fricative (three places of articulation: labiodental /f/, alveolar /s/ and post-alveolar /ʃ/
) as the target consonant, followed by either /i/ or /u/. (i.e., /fisεl/, < ficelle > , string or /ʃifɔ̃/, < chiffon > , cloth). We chose to
focus on three places of articulation, namely labiodentals, alveolars and post-alveolars, since they allow us to explore contrasts in
places of articulation whose perception is seen as difficult with a CI (e.g., Lane et al., 2007; Giezen et al., 2010; Hedrick et al., 2011).
Selecting only voiceless fricatives avoids interferences of the acoustic cues of voicing in our acoustic measurements. We chose two
different vowel contexts (/#_i/ and /#_u/) to explore the effects of anticipatory coarticulation on the production of fricatives. Since
vowel context influences the production of fricatives and their acoustic characteristics in children with NH (Körkkö, 2015; Nittrouer,
1995), we wished to explore if anticipatory vowel coarticulation affects the production of fricatives in children with CIs to a similar
extent. For the word-repetition task, we used pre-recorded audio models of the words, to ensure that all children received the same

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B. Grandon and A. Vilain Journal of Communication Disorders 86 (2020) 105996

input. In contrast to other languages such as English for example, words are not lexically stressed in French, and all syllables are
possible locations of accents (Di Cristo, 1999). We chose to stress all pre-recorded models of the words on the first syllable of each
word, to control for the effects of accentuation as much as possible. Effects of convergence to the adult models in the word-repetition
task and in the subsequent picture-naming task resulted as much as possible in a homogeneous realization of accentuation across the
corpus, ensuring that any variation observed in the analyses would not be an artefact of variation in accent placement. This was
confirmed in a parallel study, in which we explored the realization of stress patterns through analyses of the use of F0, intensity and
duration by both groups of children (Grandon, Vilain, & Gillis, 2019).

2.2.3. Recordings
The recordings took place in quiet rooms. We used a digital Marantz PMD-670 recorder (mono, sampling frequency 44 100 Hz, 16
bits), and an external cardioid AKG-C1000S microphone (audio frequency bandwidth: 50-20,000 Hz) placed on a tripod, approxi-
mately 40 cm from the children’s mouths. Pictures and audio models of words were presented on a laptop, facing the children.

2.3. Analyses

2.3.1. Acoustic analyses

For this study, we only included words that were produced by the children and that could be understood as the target word (e.g.,
we removed productions such as /sεʁvjεt/, < serviette > , towel when the target word was /ʃifɔ̃/, < chiffon > , cloth). For the
children with NH, 99.2 % of all target words were produced and could be included and 92.7 % for children with CIs were included. A
Welch t-test indicated that this difference between the two groups of children is significant (t(13) = 2.99, p = .011). Similarly, we
then excluded non-analyzable fricatives: 95.8 % of target fricatives were analyzable for children with NH, and 94.4 % for children
with CIs. For example, we excluded fricatives when they were stopped (e.g., /tifɔ̃/ instead of /ʃifɔ̃/, < chiffon > , cloth), omitted (e.g.,
/ifɔ̃/ instead of /ʃifɔ̃/, < chiffon > , cloth) or substituted with other consonants (e.g., /lifɔ̃/ instead of /ʃifɔ̃/, < chiffon > , cloth). A
Welch t-test indicated that this difference in the number of analyzable fricatives between the two groups of children is not significant
(t(25) = 1.15, p = .261). As a result, 1096 fricatives were included in our analyses (mean number per child: 31.23; SD: 5.33 for
children with CIs and 34.5; SD: 1.70 for children with NH). Words were manually segmented and annotated on Praat (Boersma &
Weenink, 2015): on a point tier we marked the beginning and the end of each target fricative (i.e., the beginning of the fricative
perturbation and the onset of voicing on the following vowel). From this segmentation, we then found the middle point of the
fricative and we extracted a 40 ms window around this middle point (20 ms before and 20 ms after the middle point of the fricative).
For each fricative, we then automatically calculated the first two spectral moments (i.e., center of gravity and standard deviation) of
this 40 ms window using a Praat script. Table 1 gives the mean center of gravity and standard deviation for each fricative in each
group (children with NH and children with CIs), in each vowel context.

2.3.2. Statistical analyses

All graphs and statistical analyses were done with the R software (R Development Core Team, 2012). First, we used a stepwise
variable selection procedure to build mixed-effect linear models (lme function in R). We first included all random-effect factors and
fixed-effect factors of interest (alone and in interactions) and then excluded all non-pertinent variables to model the data, based on
the AIC index (StepAIC function). Possible fixed-effect factors were group, place of articulation, task, vowel context, chronological
age, age at implantation and hearing age (i.e., duration of implant use) and subject was the only random-effect factor. The details of
best-fitting models used for the analyses are given in Appendices B–D in Supplementary material. When an interaction of factors was
proven to be significant, we either ran multiple comparison tests, using the emmeans function in R if all factors were categorical, or we
ran several Pearson correlations, using the cor.test function in R if at least one or several factors of the interaction was continuous.

Table 1
Mean center of gravity and standard deviation for each group (children with NH and children with CIs), at each place of articulation (labiodentals,
alveolars, post-alveolars) in each vowel context and task
Children with NH Children with CIs

Vowel context Vowel context

i u i u

Labiodentals /f/ Number of fricatives (total) 115 116 64 71

Mean center of gravity, in Hz 5092 (1766) 5186 (1988) 3825 (1843) 3296 (1625)
Mean standard deviation, in Hz 3075 (1092) 3506 (880) 2617 (872) 2754 (802)
Alveolars /s/ Number of fricatives (total) 119 113 75 68
Mean center of gravity, in Hz 7378 (1611) 5996 (1613) 5411 (1233) 4662 (1491)
Mean standard deviation, in Hz 2498 (710) 2359 (774) 2541 (782) 2522 (497)
Post-alveolars /ʃ/ Number of fricatives (total) 108 119 63 65
Mean center of gravity, in Hz 4700 (625) 4426 (1143) 4484 (696) 3998 (826)
Mean standard deviation, in Hz 1589 (418) 2040 (557) 1900 (560) 2135 (475)

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B. Grandon and A. Vilain Journal of Communication Disorders 86 (2020) 105996

Fig. 1. Center of gravity for each group (children with CIs and with NH) at each place of articulation (labiodentals, alveolars and post-alveolars).

3. Results

3.1. Center of gravity: Effect of place of articulation, group, vowel context, task and chronological age

Fig. 1 shows the center of gravity for each group and each place of articulation.
The best-fitting model for the statistical analyses of center of gravity is shown in Appendix B in Supplementary material. It
includes child as a random-effect factor, and group, place of articulation, vowel context, task and chronological age as fixed-effect
factors with several two- and three-way interactions between these variables as well. Statistical analyses indicate significant effects of
group (F(1, 29) = 36.16, p < .001), place of articulation (F(2, 1043) = 172.33, p < .001), and vowel context (F(1, 1043) = 46.09,
p < .001). The following interactions have significant effects: group x place of articulation (F(2, 1043) = 24.87, p < .001), place x
vowel context (F(2, 1043) = 14.88, p < .001), place x chronological age (F(2, 1043) = 3.59, p = .028), vowel context x chron-
ological age (F(1, 1043) = 4.81, p = .029), chronological age x task (F(1, 1043) = 7.27, p = .007), group x place x vowel context (F
(2, 1043) = 5.18, p = .006). We will detail these effects in the following paragraphs.
Group is found to have a significant effect, both alone and in interaction with place of articulation, and in interaction with place
and vowel context. As illustrated in Fig. 1, the children with CIs produce fricatives with a lower center of gravity than the children
with NH. Post-hoc multiple comparisons reveal that the between-group difference is only significant for /f/ (t(29) = -7.26, p < .001)
and /s/ (t(29) = -7.59, p < .001), but not for /ʃ/ (t(29) = -1.63, p = .590). Further pairwise comparisons show that for the children
with CIs, /s/ has the highest center of gravity, followed by /ʃ/ and then /f/ (/f/ vs. /s/: t(1043) = -8.40, p < .001; /f/ vs. /ʃ/:
t(1043) = -4.16, p < .001; /s/ vs. /ʃ/: t(1043) = 4.10, p < .001), whereas for the children with NH, /s/ has also the highest center of
gravity, but it is followed by /f/ and then /ʃ/ (/f/ vs. /s/: t(1043) = -11.44, p < .001; /f/ vs. / ʃ/: t(1043) = 4.56, p < .001; /s/ vs.
/ʃ/: t(1043) = 15.87, p < .001).
Vowel context is shown to have a significant effect on our data, both alone and in interaction with place, chronological age, and
both group and place. Fig. 2 illustrates the fact that the centers of gravity of fricatives in the context of vowel /i/ are generally higher

Fig. 2. Center of gravity for each group (children with CIs and with NH) at each place of articulation (labiodentals, alveolars and post-alveolars) in
two vowel contexts (/#_i/ and /#_u/).

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B. Grandon and A. Vilain Journal of Communication Disorders 86 (2020) 105996

Fig. 3. Center of gravity for each group (children with CIs and with NH compared to the adult auditory model) at each place of articulation
(labiodentals, alveolars and post-alveolars) and in each task (word-repetition vs. picture-naming tasks).

than in the context of /u/, and that fricatives are affected differently by vowel context in the two groups.
Post-hoc tests allow us to have a closer look at the effects of each vowel context on each fricative’s center of gravity. For the
children with CIs, no effect of vowel context is found on the center of gravity for labiodentals (t(1043) = 2.20, p = .553), for
alveolars (t(1043) = 3.12, p = .078) or for postalveolars (t(1043) = 1.70, p = .867). For the children with NH, no effect of vowel
context is found for labiodentals (t(1043) = -.05, p = 1.00) or for postalveolars (t(1043) = 1.69, p = .872). However, the center of
gravity of alveolars is significantly higher when they are followed by /i/ than /u/ (t(1043) = 8.11, p < .001).
Chronological age is found to have an effect in interaction with place, vowel context, and task. Post-hoc Pearson correlation tests
on the age x place interaction reveal that the center of gravity of /ʃ/ is higher in younger children (R = -.13, p =.011), while /f/ and
/s/ do not differ across ages (R = -.04, p = .367 and R = .02, p = .742, respectively). Tests also show that the centers of gravity in
the context of vowel /u/ is higher in younger children (R = -.08, p = .046), while they do not differ across ages in the context of /i/
(R = .03, p = .536). Finally, post-hoc correlation tests do not reveal any effect of chronological age in either task (R = .05, p = .368
for the picture-naming task, and R = -.07, p = .070 for the repetition task).
Fig. 3 shows the center of gravity for both groups of children (with CIs and with NH) along with the adult model provided, at each
place of articulation in each task (word-repetition and picture-naming tasks).
T-tests comparing the mean centers of gravity of each group to the prerecorded model indicate significant differences between the
children with CIs and the model (for /f/, t(12) = -10.23, p < .001, for /s/, t(12) = - 18.40, p < .001 and for /ʃ/, t(12) = 3.59, p =
.004), and between children with NH and the model (for /f/, t(19) = -2.46, p < .023, for /s/, t(19) = - 11.63, p < .001 and for /ʃ/, t
(19) = 4.49, p < .001).

3.2. Standard deviation: Effect of place of articulation, group, vowel context, task and chronological age

The best-fitting model for the statistical analyses of standard deviation is shown in Appendix C in Supplementary material. It
includes child as a random-effect factor, place of articulation, vowel context, as well as several of their two- and three-way inter-
actions as fixed effect factors. Statistical analyses show significant effects of place of articulation (F(2, 1049) = 273.97, p < .001),
vowel context (F(1, 1049) = 22.17, p < .001), as well as of the group x place (F(2, 1049) = 37.00, p < .001), place x vowel context
(F(2, 1049) = 14.62, p < .001), place x chronological age (F(2, 1049) = 7.41, p < .001) and group x place x chronological age (F(2,
1049) = 12.42, p < .001) interactions.
As shown on Fig. 4, the labiodentals of the children with CIs appear to have a lower standard deviation than that of the children
with NH. This is confirmed by post-hoc multiple comparisons. The standard deviation of /f/ is indeed significantly lower for the
children with CIs (t(29) = -5.31, p < .001), but those of /s/ and /ʃ/ are not significantly different (t(29) = 1.22, p = .823 for /s/ and
t(29) = 2.05, p = .342 for /ʃ/). Furthermore, pairwise comparisons also show that for the children with CIs, the standard deviations
of /f/ and /s/ are not significantly different from one another (t(1049) = .35, p = 1.00), but they both are significantly higher than
the standard deviation of /ʃ/ (t(1049) = 6.26, p < .001 for the comparison between /f/ and /ʃ/ and t(1049) = 6.01, p < .001
between /s/ and /ʃ/). For the children with NH, however, /f/ has the highest standard deviation, followed by /s/ and then /ʃ/ (/f/ vs
/s/, t(1049) = 13.667, p < .001; /f/ vs. /ʃ/, t(1049) = 23.27, p < .001 and /s/ vs. /ʃ/, t(1049) = 9.73, p < .001).
Fig. 5 shows the effects of vowel context on the standard deviation for the two groups at each place of articulation.
Vowel context is shown to have a significant effect on our data, alone and in interaction with place of articulation. Post-hoc tests
of these interactions show that standard deviation is only significantly affected by vowel context for the labials of children with NH
(i.e., it is higher in /fi/ than in /fu/, t(1049) = -4.87, p < .001) and for the postalveolars (i.e., it is higher in /ʃu/ than in /ʃi/
sequences, t(1049) = -5.24, p < .001) but it is neither the case for the fricatives of the children with CIs nor for the alveolars of
children with NH.
A significant effect on the standard deviation is found for the chronological age x place of articulation interaction (/f/ vs. /s/, t

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Fig. 4. Standard deviation of for each group (children with CIs and with NH) at each place of articulation (labiodentals, alveolars and post-
alveolars).

Fig. 5. Standard deviation for each group (children with CIs and with NH) at each place of articulation (labiodentals, alveolars and post-alveolars) in
two vowel contexts (/#_i/ and /#_u/).

(1049) = -5.60, p < .001; /f/ vs. /ʃ/, t(1049) = -5.01, p < .001), and for the chronological age x place of articulation x group
interaction (CI-/f/ vs. NH-/s/, t(1049) = 4.29, p < .001; CI-/f/ vs. NH-/ʃ/, t(1049) = 4.32, p < .001). Post-hoc Pearson’s correlation
tests reveal that for children with CIs, standard deviation is higher in older children in /f/ (R = .30, p < .001) but it is lower in older
children in /s/ (correlation test: R= -.32, p < .001) and in /ʃ/ (R= -.29, p < .001). As for what is shown on centers of gravity,
standard deviations in older children with CIs are closer to those of the children with NH. By contrast, there is no significant effect of
chronological at any place of articulation for the children with NH (R = -.01, p = .825 for /f/, R=-.08, p = .224 for /s/, R = -.01, p
= .847 for /ʃ/).
T-tests comparing standard deviation of both groups of children to the prerecorded model indicate a significant difference for /ʃ/
(t(19) = 9.95 = p < .001) but not for /f/ (t(19) = -0.21, p = .837), and /s/ (t(19) = 1.85, p = .079), for children with NH and for
/f/ (t(12) = -5.04, p < .001) and /ʃ/ (t(12) = 8.89, p < .001) for children with CIs, but not for /s/ for the children with CIs (t(12) =
1.99, p = .073).
Finally, the best-fitted model for standard deviation did not include task. The effect of task did not reach the significance level set
for our study (p < .05) and we conclude that task has no effect on standard deviation.

3.3. Center of gravity and standard deviation: Effect of age at implantation and hearing age (children with CIs)

In this section, two models with both age at implantation and hearing age were built with the data from the children with CIs
only, to explore the effects of both factors on the center of gravity and the standard deviation of fricatives (Appendix D in
Supplementary material). Both the models for the center of gravity and the standard deviation include the place of articulation, vowel
context, task, age at implantation, hearing age, and several of their two- and three-way interactions.
Our statistical analyses show no significant effect of age at implantation (F(1,10) = 3.62, p = .086) or of hearing age alone (F(1,
10) = 1.12, p = .315) on the center of gravity. There is however an effect of the place of articulation x hearing age interaction (F(2,

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B. Grandon and A. Vilain Journal of Communication Disorders 86 (2020) 105996

380) = 3.40, p = .035), and of the vowel context x hearing age interaction (F(1, 380) = 9.27, p = .003). Separate correlation tests
indicate that for the children with CIs, the centers of gravity are higher with a longer use of CI for /f/ (R = .18, p = .033), but neither
for /s/ nor /ʃ/ (R = .03, p = .698 and R = -.11, p = .198 respectively). As concerns the vowel context x hearing age interaction,
centers of gravity are found be higher with a longer use of CI in /#_u/ context (R = .21, p = .003) and to be unaffected by the
hearing age in /#_i/ context (R = .09, p = .199).
Similarly to what we observe for the centers of gravity, we find no significant effect of age at implantation (F(1,10) = .36, p =
.559) or of hearing age alone (F(1,10) = .04, p = .839) on the standard deviations. We do however find significant effects of the
hearing age x place of articulation interaction (F(2,384) = .25.88, p < .001), and of the vowel context x hearing age interaction (F
(1,384) = 5.80, p = .017). Separate correlation tests per place of articulation show significant effects of hearing age on standard
deviation for /f/ (i.e., larger standard deviation with longer implant use, R = .32, p < .001) and for /s/ (i.e., smaller standard
deviation with longer implant use, R = -.24, p = .004) but not for /ʃ/ (R = -.11, p = .202).

3.4. Summary of the results

Our statistical analyses showed that the children with CIs differ from their peers with NH in that they have lower centers of
gravity for /f/ and /s/, and lower standard deviation for /f/. Furthermore, the alveolars (/s/) of the children with CIs have the highest
centers of gravity followed by /ʃ/ and then /f/, when alveolars (/s/) of the children with NH have the highest centers of gravity
followed by /f/ and then /ʃ/. As for standard deviation, /f/ has the highest deviation in children with NH, followed by /s/, which is
followed by /ʃ/. The only difference for children with CIs is that /f/ and /s/ have similar standard deviations.
As concerns the effect of vowel context, we also find different results for the two groups of children. While there is a significant
effect of vowel context on the center of gravity of /s/ and on standard deviation for /f/ and /ʃ/ for children with NH, none of these
effects is found with children with CIs. Children with CIs seem to implement less anticipatory coarticulation than their peers with NH.
As concerns chronological age, it is found to affect centers of gravity in the same way for both groups, with a decreasing center of
gravity for /ʃ/. Standard deviation, however, varies differently in the two groups. While we find no effect of chronological age for the
children with NH, we find changes for the children with CIs: standard deviations increase for /f/, and decrease for /s/ and /ʃ/,
indicating that their production becomes closer to that of the children with NH when they become older.
Age at implantation does not seem to have any effect on the data of our children with CIs, whereas hearing age does have an
impact on the acoustic characteristics of the fricatives. Center of gravity and standard deviation increase with hearing age for /f/ and
standard deviation decreases with hearing age for /s/. However, one limitation of our study is that our population is not ideal to allow
a strict analysis of these factors, since it does not include children of the same chronological age who would differ only in hearing age
or age at implantation. More cross-sectional and longitudinal data would be needed to understand if the likelihood for production of
acoustic cues to fricatives in the children with CIs (both first and second moments) to catch up with that of their peers with NH
improves with earlier implantation.
Finally, our results show no effects of task on fricative production for both children with NH and children with CIs.

4. Discussion

4.1. Production of fricatives in French-speaking children

Our results provide several indications regarding fricative production in French in both children with NH and children with CIs at
late stages of phonological development. For all children, /s/ has the highest center of gravity. This is consistent with the literature in
French (Calliope, 1989) and shows that all children have been able to develop acoustic cues to fricative production similar to those of
their mother tongue, consistently with what had been shown by Li et al. (2009) in younger children. Furthermore, for the children
with NH, non-sibilant (/f/) fricatives are distinct from sibilants (/s/ and /ʃ/), that is, /f/ has larger standard deviation than /s/ and
/ʃ/, consistently with Nissen and Fox (2005). However, our study shows a further distinction between /s/ and /ʃ/ (i.e., /s/ has a
larger standard deviation than /ʃ/). This was found by Li et al. (2009) in younger children, but not in Nissen and Fox (2005).
Among the main differences in fricative production between our two groups of children are the lower centers of gravity for /s/
and less distinction between /s/ and /ʃ/ in the children with CIs when compared to the children with NH. Center of gravity being the
main acoustic cue to distinguish alveolar fricatives /s/, our study highlights the challenge for the children with CIs to produce this
place of articulation. This can be the result of an especially difficult perception of high-frequency sounds with the cochlear implant
(Drennan & Rubinstein, 2008; Moore, 2003), and is consistent with previous literature (e.g., Todd et al., 2011). Furthermore, our
results show that the children with CIs are able to produce a distinct contrast between /s/ and /ʃ/ as early as two years post-
implantation, yet not as strongly marked as for children with NH. This differs from the study by Mildner and Liker (2008) in which
both alveolars (/s/) and postalveolars (/ʃ/) in children with CIs are only produced distinctly 46 months after implantation. Our
results also differ from the study by Uchanski and Geers (2003) which showed similar alveolars (/s/) and post-alveolars (/ʃ/) in
children with CIs and children with NH. However, both our study and Uchanski and Geers (2003) show a higher center of gravity in
/s/ than /ʃ/ for children with CIs.
Our results also showed that labiodentals (/f/) are more compact in children with CIs (i.e., they have a lower standard deviation)
than children with NH. Other studies did not propose analyses of that second spectral moment of labiodentals (Mildner & Liker, 2008:
Todd et al., 2011; Uchanski & Geers, 2003 only focused on /s/ and /ʃ/), which is the most salient cue to labiodental fricatives.
Different vowel context effects were found for our two groups of children. The children with NH produce similar coarticulation

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patterns for alveolars to what has been shown in English-speaking children (Nissen & Fox, 2005; Nittrouer, 1995) or Finnish-speaking
children (Körkkö, 2015): they produce lower centers of gravity for /s/ before /u/ than before /i/, which shows that they anticipate
the vowel gesture during the fricative consonant. They do not however show that same pattern for the other two fricative places of
articulation. Coarticulation in the other two fricatives is evidenced by an effect of vowel context on standard deviation: standard
deviation is lower before /u/ than before /i/. By contrast, the children with CIs in our study do not show any vowel anticipation
behavior in fricatives, whether on center of gravity or standard deviation. This would suggest that, although they have developed the
ability to produce distinct fricative places of articulation, they do not yet master coarticulation patterns. Such lack of coarticulation
patterns could be explained either by lack of auditory information on acceptable acoustic variability, or by reduced practice of
articulatory strategies, due to late access to speech information.
In sum, the children with CIs in the present study deviate from their peers with NH for the production of high centers of gravity for
/s/, and of large standard deviations for /f/, which are the most salient cues to each of these two fricatives (Jongman et al., 2000), as
well as for the production of coarticulatory patterns. Such alterations to the production of fricative contrasts might contribute to the
relatively lower intelligibility of French-speaking children with cochlear implants evidenced by Grandon, Martinez, Samson, and
Vilain (2020). Further studies would be needed to evaluate the weight of different phonetic specificities on speech intelligibility, as
discussed by Todd et al. (2011): “while listeners may accurately distinguish productions of /s/ and /ʃ/ by children with CIs, the speed
or ease with which listeners distinguish these productions may be reduced”.

4.2. Variation in fricative production between the age of 5 and 11 years in children with CIs and children with NH

For children with NH, no overall effect of chronological age was found on the centers of gravity and standard deviations of the
three fricatives under study, except for a decrease in the center of gravity of /ʃ/. This suggests a plateau in the development of
fricative production, similar to Romeo et al.’s (2013) study, which showed that fricative production in English-speaking children was
stable between nine and 14 years of age (i.e. minor effects of age in children and higher variability in production, when compared to
adults), reaching an adult-like production later, between 14 and 18 years of age. The children in our study are slightly younger than
in Romeo et al. (2013) and both studies have similar outcomes (i.e. relatively stable fricative production between five and 14 years of
age). This stable stage between five and 11 years of age follows an earlier stage of development of fricative production in younger
children. Nissen and Fox (2005) showed that centers of gravity of 3- to 5-year-old children’s /s/ and /ʃ/ were becoming more and
more distinct as children were getting older, and closer to adult production, with a decrease in the center of gravity of /ʃ/ from four
years of age. This is also consistent with the study by Nittrouer (1995), which showed a similar trend in 3- to 7-year-old children.
Contrary to what is shown for the children with NH, an effect of chronological age on the standard deviations of all fricatives was
found for the children with CIs. Indeed, the standard deviations of labials (/f/) increase, while those of alveolars (/s/) and post-
alveolars (/ʃ/) decrease with chronological age, getting closer to those of children with NH. In sum, the characteristics of fricatives
are evolving toward values of children with NH during the age span under study, which suggests that our children with CIs have not
yet reached the plateau that we have observed in the children with NH of our study.

4.3. Role of age at implantation and hearing age as predictors of the development of fricative production for children with CIs

No effect of age at implantation on the center of gravity is observed in children with CIs, while effects of hearing age are shown for
center of gravity and standard deviation (i.e., the center of gravity increases for /f/, and the standard deviation of /f/ increases with
hearing age while that of /s/ decreases with hearing age). Both effects of chronological and hearing age could indicate that due to a
late access to oral communication, phonological development in children with CIs is delayed when compared to the children with
NH, whose production is not different in younger and older children. Finally, the absence of any effect of age at implantation
contrasts with a parallel study on the intelligibility of the same population of children (Grandon et al., 2020), which showed better
performance for children who had received their implant before the age of 24 months. Once again however, we are aware of the
limitations of our population sample for the analysis of these two factors.
The benefit of longer hearing age on the production of fricatives could be discussed in light of the limitations of the cochlear
implant. As mentioned in perception studies (Drennan & Rubinstein, 2008; Moore, 2003), the implant’s technology does not transmit
all fine-grained acoustic characteristics of fricatives, translating into difficulties in perceiving certain high-frequency sounds (Mildner
et al., 2006; Van Lierde et al., 2005). This could mean that early implantation and longer use of the cochlear implant might predict
better production of certain features of the fricatives, although these limitations will be hard to overcome for the fricatives as a whole.
The children’s production might most probably still reflect this partial perception in high-frequency ranges in the long run. Other
speech sounds (e.g., stops) rely on other acoustic cues that are better transmitted by the cochlear implant and therefore better
perceived (Mildner et al., 2006). These sounds have been found easier to produce by children, with a benefit of early implantation
(Uchanski & Geers, 2003). Further investigations of fricative production in older children and young adults with CIs (e.g., users of CIs
aged 12 to 20 years) could help understand if the implant’s limitations can indeed be overcome or if they will continue to shape the
production of their users.

4.4. Stability of speech production and phonological representation

In this study, we chose to compare children’s speech production in two different tasks, word repetition vs. picture naming, with
the idea that the picture-naming task would elicit the children’s stored representation of the words, while the word-repetition task

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would question the potential influence of immediate auditory feedback on their productions. The results do not show any effect of
task in our data.
The absence of any significant effect of the task in children with NH suggests stability of the phonological representation of
fricatives between five and 11 years of age, as their production is not influenced by the auditory input. Similarly, the absence of a
significant effect of task in children with CIs (i.e., children CIs have similar fricatives whether prerecorded models of the words are
provided or not) shows that children with CIs have also been able to build stable phonological representations of fricatives. All
children were therefore able to build their own representation of the fricatives, and to integrate control of their articulators and all
auditory information available to them through internal and external feedback loops to produce fricatives reflecting their hearing
abilities.
Another possible explanation however, is that our protocol might not have allowed us to reveal evidence of a task effect. Indeed,
the two tasks were tested within a short interval of time, due to technical constraints, and the picture-naming task always followed
the word-repetition task, because we wanted the children to lower the weight of lexical access in the picture-naming task. Therefore,
the children may have retained the adult audio model in their verbal memory between the first and the second task, thus eliminating
any task effect.

5. Conclusion

Comparing the production of fricatives in 5- to 11-year-old children with CIs and children with NH allowed us to provide a
description of fricative production in French-speaking children at late stages in phonological development, and to question the role
played by perceptual abilities in phonological development. Both groups of children appeared to have built stable phonological
categories. Yet, for the children with CIs, the fricatives differ from those of the children with NH (e.g., lower centers of gravity for
alveolars /s/, smaller standard deviations for labiodentals /f/), suggesting that building these stable representations is highly de-
pendent on auditory feedback and hearing abilities of the children, which does not however completely hinder the development of
fricative production. Finally, fricative production continues to develop with a longer use of the cochlear implant. We argue that
children with CIs are catching up with their peers with NH, yet with a comparatively longer time of sensori-motor learning, deriving
from a later access to oral communication.

Funding

This work was supported by a doctoral grant (Région Rhône-Alpes – ARC2 grant) awarded to first author.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Bénédicte Grandon: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Data curation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review &
editing, Visualisation. Anne Vilain: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Data curation, Writing - original draft,
Writing - review & editing, Supervision, Funding acquisition, Administration.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by a doctoral grant (Region Rhône-Alpes ARC2 grant) awarded to first author. We thank all children
participants and their parents, as well as doctors and speech therapists who helped recruiting the participants. We also thank the
editor, the associate editor and the anonymous reviewers for their help on an earlier version of this paper.

Appendix A. Supplementary data

Supplementary material related to this article can be found, in the online version, at doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcomdis.2020.
105996.

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