Word and feature identification by profoundly deaf teenagers using the Queen's University tactile vocoder.
The experiments described are part of an ongoing evaluation of the Queen's University Tactile Vocoder, a device that allows the acoustic waveform to be felt as a vibrational pattern on the skin. Two prelingually profoundly deaf teenagers reached criterion on a 50-word vocabulary (live voice, single speaker) using information obtained solely from the tactile vocoder with 28.5 and 24.0 hours of training. Immediately following word-learning experiments, subjects were asked to place 16 CVs into five phonemic categories (voiced & unvoiced stops, voiced & unvoiced fricatives, approximants). Average accuracy was 84.5%. Similar performance (89.6%) was obtained for placement of 12 VCs into four phonemic categories. Subjects were able to acquire some general rules about voicing and manner of articulation cues.
D000293:Adolescent; D003638:Deafness / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D012682:Sensory Aids; D014110:Touch; D014706:Verbal Learning; D014732:Vibration / Q000627:therapeutic use