The speech spectrographic display: interpretation of visual patterns by hearing-impaired adults

If visual speech training aids are to be used effectively, it is important to assess whether hearing-impaired speakers can accurately interpret visual patterns and arrive at correct conclusions concerning the accuracy of speech production. In this investigation with the Speech Spectrographic Display (SSD), a pattern interpretation task was given to 10 hearing-impaired adults. Subjects viewed selected SSD patterns from hearing-impaired speakers, evaluated the accuracy of speech production, and identified the SSD visual features that were used in the evaluation. In general, results showed that subjects could use SSD patterns to evaluate speech production. For those pattern interpretation errors that occurred most were related either to phonetic/orthographic confusions or to misconceptions concerning production of speech.