Relative effectiveness of three repair strategies on the visual-identification of misperceived words

Experimental videotapes were used to assess the effectiveness of three repair strategies: (1) repetitions, (2) synonyms, and (3) paraphrases. Three groups of normal-hearing adults viewed one of three videotapes. The same 50 test-words were used on each videotape. Each test-item consisted of three stimuli: a test-word, a stimulus that incorporated the repair strategy under investigation, and a repetition of the initial test-word. Each videotape displayed one of the three repair strategies under investigation. The subjects were required to identify test-words presented in a visual-only mode. The results indicated that the performance of the subjects who were provided with synonyms or paraphrases was significantly better than the performance of the subjects who were shown repetitions. Also, subjects who were shown paraphrases performed significantly better than those who were shown synonyms. These findings indicate that repair strategies that incorporate the use of substitute stimuli such as synonyms and paraphrases may be more effective than the simple repetition of the misperceived stimulus.