Internal speech functioning and speechreading in deafened and normal hearing adults

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Auditory Neuroscience
• Speech and Hearing Sciences

Background:

• Internal speech, the silent, self-directed speech, plays a crucial role in cognitive functions.
• Acquired deafness, particularly profound hearing loss, may impact the development and maintenance of internal speech.
• Understanding these impacts is vital for auditory rehabilitation and cognitive support.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare internal speech functioning between deafened and normal-hearing adults.
• To investigate the effects of acquired deafness on both direct and indirect measures of internal speech.
• To explore the relationship between the duration of deafness and internal speech accuracy.

Main Methods:

• Comparative study design involving deafened and normal-hearing adult participants.
• Assessment of internal speech using direct testing (rhyme-judgement tasks) and indirect testing (lexical access tests).
• Statistical analysis to compare speed and accuracy between groups and correlate accuracy with duration of deafness.

Main Results:

• No significant differences in the speed of internal speech processing between deafened and normal-hearing groups.
• No significant differences in accuracy for indirect lexical access tests.
• Deafened adults showed significantly lower accuracy on direct rhyme-judgement tasks, correlating with years of deafness.

Conclusions:

• Acquired deafness leads to the deterioration of representational aspects of internal speech over time.
• Mechanical aspects of internal speech appear to remain relatively intact despite deafness.
• Declines in speechreading ability are suggested by correlations with internal speech accuracy, highlighting broader communication challenges.