Nasal vowel production and grammatical processing in French-speaking children with cochlear implants and normal-hearing peers.

Our study investigates morphemic receptive skills, quality of the phonological representations and production abilities of the acoustic nasal feature in a language with nasal vocalic phonemes (i.e., French), as well as the relationship between these different skills, in a group of children with cochlear implants and normal hearing peers. The results show weaker receptive skills, associated with more phonological errors in production, in the implanted children, as well as differences in the use of the different acoustic cues carrying the vowel nasality that can suggest a perceptual-productive profile more focused on perceptually salient cues. These profiles can be related to language skills, with the use of subtle acoustic cues being associated with better linguistic performance.