Cued Speech and the reception of spoken language

This study was designed to investigate the effect of Cued Speech on the speech reception abilities of profoundly hearing-impaired children under seven conditions of presentation: audition; lipreading; audition and lipreading; cues; audition and cues; lipreading and cues; and audition, lipreading, and cues. The 18 subjects had been taught through the use of Cued Speech for at least 4 years. The subjects were presented with specially designed speech tests (syllables and key words in sentences) which had been recorded on color videotape, and they responded in writing. Speech reception scores of over 95% with the key word in sentence materials and over 80% with the syllables were obtained with lipreading plus cues, and with audition, lipreading plus cues. Equally high levels of accuracy in speech reception by such children have not previously been reported. The subjects also demonstrated the ability to use audition with the sentence materials, both in combination with lipreading and with cues, though there were large individual differences under these conditions. Speech reception abilities in the lipreading-plus-audition condition were highly correlated with scores for speech production, whereas language attainments were correlated with reception through Cued Speech. The implications of these findings to the field of aural rehabilitation are discussed.