A perceptual evaluation of the speech of adventitiously deaf adult males

The present study investigated the effects of adventitious deafness on perceptual judgments of segmental and suprasegmental speech production skills. Subjects were 25 adventitiously deaf and 10 normal-hearing adult male speakers. Twelve subjects were classified as aidable profound (AP) and 13 subjects were classified as unaidable profound (UP). Each subject was judged by 15 listeners, first on seven speech and voice variables and, second, on whether they were adventitiously deaf or normal-hearing and, if adventitiously deaf, if speech rehabilitation was warranted. Both the AP and UP adventitiously deaf subjects were judged significantly different from each other and from normal-hearing subjects on all seven variables. They were, in hierarchical order: intonation, pitch, rate, nasality, vowel duration, articulation, and intensity. Aural rehabilitation was judged to be warranted in 49% of the speakers identified as being adventitiously deaf, specifically 26% of the AP speakers and 74% of the UP speakers. This finding indicates that auditory information is a necessary component for maintaining accurate speech and voice production abilities following onset of profound hearing loss after the acquisition of an adult phonological system.