Effects of tactile training on visual speechreading: performance changes related to individual differences in...

We report on a follow-up study of the Rönnberg, Andersson, Lyxell, & Spens (1998) speech tracking training study. The purpose was to examine, initially and after training, the effects of different tactile aids on tasks of visual speechreading. We also examined cognitive prerequisites for initial baseline speechreading and posttraining speechreading performance. Compared with speechreading alone, tactile aids impaired sentence-based speechreading at first, although performance improved with training. No effects of vibrotactile aids or training were obtained for visual word-decoding. Initial baseline speechreading performance and posttraining performance correlated with cognitive skills, but the size of the correlations changed. The size of the correlations also varied with the different tactually mediated speechreading conditions.