Bunta, FerencKnowles, Lacey2023-07-032023-07-032023-04-13https://hdl.handle.net/10657/14782Purpose: This pilot study aims to investigate a specific aspect of how bilingualism and hearing loss may impact phonological development by examining the production of the low front unrounded lax vowel (e.g., the vowel in “cat”) by Spanish-English-speaking bilingual children with hearing loss who use cochlear implants (CIs) and their Spanish-English-speaking bilingual peers with normal hearing (NH). Method: 20 Spanish-English-speaking bilingual children who use CIs (mean age of 6:0) and 20 Spanish-English-speaking bilingual children with NH (mean age of 6:1) produced single-word productions elicited through well-established techniques. The productions were recorded and saved as digital .wav files. The [æ] vowel of target words bat, cat, and hat were analyzed using established procedures in WaveSurfer. A waveform, formant plot, and pitch contour were used to determine the vowel’s duration, fundamental frequency (F0) and its first two formants (F1 & F2). A GLM repeated measure was ran with word at three levels (bat, cat, and hat) and measure at 4 levels (F1, F2, F0, and duration) as the within subject variables. CI use and NH were the between-subject variables. Result: The results showed no statistically significant difference between bilingual CI users and their bilingual peers with NH in reference to the production of the /æ/ phoneme. Conclusion: This study shows no evidence of a difference in the productions of CI users versus their peers with NH. Further investigation will include analyses of other vowels, such as /ɑ/, /i/, and /u/ in English and /ɑ/, /i/, and /u/ in Spanish.enThe author of this work is the copyright owner. UH Libraries and the Texas Digital Library have their permission to store and provide access to this work. Further transmission, reproduction, or presentation of this work is prohibited except with permission of the author(s).Communication sciences and disordersPoster