Training auditory-visual speech reception in adults with moderate sensorineural hearing loss.
A new method of training auditory-visual speech reception is described and evaluated on an experimental group of 12 hearing-impaired adult patients. The method involves simultaneous, live presentation of the visible and acoustic components of the therapist's speech, where the acoustic signal is degraded under the therapist's control with a voice-activated switch. Pre- and post-training performance was assessed with an auditory-visual sentence recognition task. The performance of the experimental group, who received 10 hours of individual training, is described and compared to a control group who received a traditional aural rehabilitation program and to a group of normals who received no training. The experimental training resulted in significantly greater improvement than the control group. A description of the training, including rationale and suggestions for implementation in a clinical setting, is provided.
D000328:Adult; D001307:Auditory Perception; D005260:Female; D006319:Hearing Loss, Sensorineural / Q000523:psychology / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008722:Methods; D008875:Middle Aged; D013067:Speech Perception; D013690:Television / Q000295:instrumentation; D014796:Visual Perception