title: Speech habilitation of hard of hearing adolescents using electropalatography and ultrasound as evaluated by trained listeners.
abstract: Four adolescents with moderate to severe sensorineural hearing losses and moderately unintelligible speech participated in a 14-week speech therapy study using two dynamic visual feedback technologies, electropalatography and ultrasound imaging. Electropalatography provides information about tongue-hard palate contact points. Ultrasound displays images of tongue shape and movement in two dimensions from the tip to the root. Treatment targets for all participants included a sibilant place contrast (/s/ versus /[symbol: see text]/), liquids /l/ and /[symbol: see text]/, and the tense-lax vowel contrast with the high vowels. Trained listener evaluations of pre- and post-treatment transcripts are reported in this paper. Significant improvements in speech production were noted across students and targets. Treatment targets improved significantly more than non-treatment test targets overall. Students showed greatest gains on consonants that were absent or marginal in their speech pre-treatment. No particular advantage of one technology over the other was evident in this sample.
authors.affiliation: School of Audiology and Speech Sciences, University of British Columbia, Canada. bb@audiospeech.ubc.ca
authors.forename: Barbara
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Bernhardt
authors.forename: Bryan
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Gick
authors.forename: Penelope
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Bacsfalvi
authors.forename: Julie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ashdown
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D004558:Electric Stimulation; D005260:Female; D034381:Hearing Loss / Q000150:complications* / Q000534:rehabilitation; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010156:Palatal Muscles / Q000503:physiopathology*; D013060:Speech; D013062:Speech Articulation Tests / Q000379:methods; D013064:Speech Disorders / Q000209:etiology / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D013065:Speech Intelligibility; D013068:Speech Production Measurement / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D013070:Speech Therapy; D016896:Treatment Outcome