Speech Spectrographic Display: Use of Visual Feedback by Hearing-Impaired Adults During Independent Articulation Practice

Visual speech training aids have been developed to assist in correcting the articulation errors of the hearing impaired and thus improve the intelligibility of their speech. This investigation compared the improvement made by hearing-impaired adults in speech production and self-monitoring skills under two conditions: visual feedback from the Speech Spectrographic Display (SSD) and feedback from a speech-language pathologist. Ten hearing-impaired adults, aged 17 to 24, attempted to improve their speech and self-monitoring skills over nine trials. Results indicated significant improvement in speech production across trials for both SSD and clinician feedback, but no significant difference between conditions. In addition, there was no significant improvement in self-monitoring skills for either condition.