Standardization of four videotaped tests of speechreading ranging in task difficulty

Repeated measures are needed to assess speechreading ability of prospective cochlear implant candidates and to follow their progress over the course of treatment. To perform such measures, high quality color videotaped versions of four speechreading tests were constructed using a male and a female speaker. Materials were selected to provide gradations in task difficulty ranging from responses to questions with the topic known, to verbatim repetition, to abstraction of information from a spoken paragraph in order to answer questions. The tests were: (1) NAL/West Haven modification; (2) Iowa-Keaster, Forms A and B; (3) CID Everyday Sentences; and (4) Gold Rush Paragraph. The tapes were standardized by presentation to young adult normal subjects. Results indicated that a range of performance could be measured by using the present tests as a battery, although the anticipated ranking of tests was not obtained.