1. CSD 5400 REHABILITATION PROCEDURES FOR THE HARD OF HEARING
Visual Stimuli in Communication
Speechreading and Manual Communication

2. Speechreading/Lipreading
How good do you think you are?
Video activity
“I see what you say”
Do you think everyone has the same ability??
Are some people better than others?
What might cause this?

3. Salient Factors Affecting Performance
1. Visibility of Speech Sounds
Visibility of the articulators needed to make the speech sound
Degree to which sounds are distinguishable from each other
Salient factors
Two factors come into play with respect to visibility

4. Visibility
Most visible phonemes are made at the front of the mouth with maximum lip, jaw, and tongue movements
Only 11-57% of English phonemes are visible during production and distinguishable from one another

5. Distinguishability
Making phonemes different enough that when perceived, only one phoneme fits all the pieces of information perceived
When we perceive speech by auditory stimuli, phonemes are distinguished on the basis of the different acoustic cues related to place of articulation, manner of articulation, and voicing
When we perceive speech visually, we can only “see” place of articulation
You can’t “see” voicing or manner
Places of articulation are limited in terms of what we can see
Many phonemes look alike due to similar place of artic

6. Several Classification Systems for English Visemes
Viseme groups are contrasting groups of homophemes that differ in terms of place of articulation
Homophemes are speech sounds that look the same (they share a similar place of articulation)
Homophemes are indistinguishable from other members in its class
These words can’t be differentiated bases on visual info alone.
So, this kind of visibility issue will really affect readability

7. Visibility and Its Effect on Speechreading
Visibility of a particular phoneme will contribute to its ability to be “read”
Sentence familiarity and linguistic structure are also factors
Visibility can change from words in isolation to words in sentences
Short sentences are easier than longer ones
Frequently occuring words are easier than strange words
People show varying abilities to integrate visual and auditory information

8. 2. Rate of Speech Average rate of speech Consonant durations
15 phonemes/sec
Consonant durations ms
Speechreading is very taxing on the visual system and very fatiguing
Passive speechreading is impossible
Natural rates are best
Visual system was not designed to detect events of such short duration, so it’s very taxing
Severely slowing down the rate of speech tends to overexagerate artic movements. Interjects distortion

9. 3. Speaker Characteristics
How much do the articulators move?
How expressive is the speaker?
Gestures?
Familiarity?
Is the mouth visible?
Enough said

10. Environmental Characteristics
Speaker-to-listener distances
Optimal distance is about 5 feet
Lighting
Lighting should be in front of the speaker--no shadows or glare

11. 5. Speechreader Characteristics
IQ and personality characteristics don’t correlate well with this ability
Willingness to synthesize information
Willingness to guess
Age

12. Assessment of Speechreading
Standardized tests do exist
Utley, Barley, Keaster
Not used much at all
1990 survey of ASHA certified clinically active audiologists reported only 16% used any kind of speechreading assessment tool
Why?
Problems with test validity
Problems with test difficulty
Problems with test, re-test reliability
No auditory cues allowed
Validity--does the test really measure skill and can these scores reflect true ability in all settings
Probably not--what about in conversation?? Probably doesn’t adequately estimate this
Difficulty--no one ever gets 100%, but many people score close to 0%. Does 0% really mean an absence of skill??
Most tests only have 2 forms. If you need to do a lot of re-assessment, can they remember the items?? Will their scores improve because they remember the items. Are the test forms equivalent??

13. Bisensory Evaluation
Speechreading is best used as a supplement to auditory information
Table is consonant perception performance in a variety of auditory/visual combinations
Look at the gains achieved when visual is added to auditory
Notice that visual alone is not effective

14. A Philosophical Approach to Speechreading…
Remember that the acoustic cues most affected and lost by the presence of HL are place of articulation cues
Speechreading can give some additional information regarding place of artic cues and only place cues
Manner of articulation and voicing cues are less likely to be affected by the presence of HL
Therefore, information of manner of articulation and voicing can be obtained auditorily and speechreading can help supplement the lost information related to place of articulation

15. Speechreading Training for Adults
Best handled in a discussion (group) format
Here’s an example of a handout you might develop to stimulate discussion of the speechreading process

16. Speechreading Training For Adults
Here’s another example of a way to direct a discussion of the process of speechreading
“Good communication involves observing”
Notice that you’re not just emphasizing mouth movements

17. Speechreading Training for Adults
Here’s an example of a handout you might generate to discuss the “rules” to follow when speechreading
Specific ways to improve receptive communication

18. Speechreading Training for Adults
Here’s another illustration of a list of “basic rules” for speechreading

19. Speechreading Training for Adults
It’s very helpful to get adults thinking about factors that affect performance, where these variables arise, and whether they are under the HI listener’s control
“Factors that influence understanding”

20. Speechreading Training for Adults
It’s also necessary to help listeners be realistic about the overall effectiveness of speechreading
Discuss the relative visibility of individual speech sounds
Need to emphasize that most speech sounds are not very visible.
Speechreading is a supplement to auditory input

21. Speechreading Training for Adults
Don’t let your clients forget the importance of nonverbal cues/information
Help them make use of this information in improving their overall receptive communication

22. Speechreading Training for Children
Very different from the informal adult approach
A major habilitation component for kids with cochlear implants

23. Speechreading Objectives
Analytic
These training objectives are directed toward developing vowel and consonant recognition skills
Underlying goal is to gradually increase the child’s reliance on the auditory signal for discriminating phonemic contrasts while they speechread

24. Vowel Analytic Training Objectives--Some Examples
The student will discriminate words with /i/ and /u/
me from moo, geese from goose, she from shoe
The student will discriminate words with /i/ and /a/
heat from hot, keep from cop, seed from sock, cheap from chop
The student will identify words with /i/, /u/, and /a/, using a four-item and then six-item response set
bean from bean, pot, pit, and pool
The student will identify words with /u/, /i/, and /a/ from an open set of familiar vocabulary
Reinforce the idea that auditory cues are not restricted.

25. Consonant Analytic Training Objectives--Some Examples
The student will discriminate consonant pairs that share similar place of production but differ in manner and voice
pan from man
The student will discriminate consonant pairs that share place and manner and/or voice
park from bark
The student will identify consonants from a 4 item response set that share manner of production
tag from tag, bag, back, and gas
The student will identify consonants from a 4 item response set of voiced or voiceless consonants
pop from pop, cop, cap, and top
The student will identify words from an open set of familiar vocabulary

26. Synthetic Speechreading Training Objectives--an Example
The student will follow simple directions using a closed response set
The student will identify a sentence illustration from a set of four dissimilar pictures
The student will identify a sentence illustration from a set of four similar pictures
The student will listen to topic-related sentences and repeat/paraphrase them
The student will listen to two related sentences and draw a picture about them
The student will speechread a paragraph-long narrative and then answer questions about it

27. Summary Remarks about Speechreading..
Can speechreading skills be developed significantly through training?
The jury is still out
When improvements occur, they tend to be modest
Sometimes we can’t objectively demonstrate improvement, but the client feels their skills are better
Not much data available concerning children

28. Summary Remarks about Speechreading..
Speechreading training is almost never provided in the absence of other aural rehab services
Amplification, effective communication strategies training, auditory training, etc
Most beneficial to incorporate into the training ways the listener can minimize the difficulty of the speechreading task
Managing the environment
Appropriate communication behaviors of their communication partners

29. Manual Forms of Communication
Fingerspelling
Current uses
Manual forms of communication:
There are a variety of major categories of manual communication systems. You can think of them in terms of three major categories:
1. The manual Alphabet: I don’t know anything about the history of the manual alphabet, but it’s been around along time. Although Helen Keller is portrayed as communicating solely using this system, there is no educational methodology I’m aware of that advocates using this system as a sole method of communication. I bet many of you already know the hand shapes used in this system, but we’ll go thru them and play a few games with them.
Do the finger spelling activity. Finger spelling is used to spell out proper nouns, if there is no sign for them, or if one of the speakers wouldn’t be familiar with the sign. It’s also used by people not very familiar with sign language (English or ASL) to spell out words they don’t know the sign for (I guess this is very annoying for deaf people).

30. Manual Forms of Communication
Manually coded English
Signed English
Seeing Essential English (SEE I)
Seeing Essential English II (SEE II)
CD ROM Ch08.02
An example of SEE II
1. Manually coded English systems: These are systems that use spoken English grammar. There is a sign for every English word and signs for some morphological endings like /ing/, /ed/, /s/. The philosophy behind this signing system is that a deaf child’s native language (in this culture) is English. Replacing spoken English with a visual code is fine, as long as the grammar is preserved. Back when I was an undergrad and graduate student in this field in the late 70s and early 80s, this was the only manual communication system used with deaf and HI children. This is the only sign language taught in college programs. This is the only sign language system I know.
There are a couple of categories of manually coded English.
1. Signed English: every word has a sign and then there are signs “markers” that reflect changes in verb form (past, present, future), number, possession, etc. In most cases then, you sign and word and add a marker at the end. Do “cook” and “cooks” and “cooked” and “cooking”.
2. Seeing Essential English (SEE I): Really just a more current version of signed English
3. Seeing Essential English II (SEE II): The most current version of Signed English.
Play the CD ROM on SEE.

31. American Sign Language (ASL)
The only recognized language of the Deaf culture
1. American Sign Language (ASL): This is the recognized language of the Deaf culture. ASL is much more than just a manual signing system—it really is its own language, it just happens to be a visual one. I don’t know ASL, I’ve never taken any classes to learn it—but I bet some of you have. It is now common to find college classes in ASL offered like any other foreign language elective—indeed, some colleges offer a minor in ASL. This was unheard of when I was your age.
ASL is a curious language in that although this system is used in the US and is called American Sign Language, its grammar is more closely associated with French. In order to understand how that can be, I need to give you a little lesson in the history of deaf education in our country:

32. A History…. Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet Born in 1787 Hartford Connecticut
Alice Cogswell
Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet was born in 1787 and lived with his family in Hartford, CT. As a college student, he went off to Yale University’s divinity school, but sometime during his studies, he became ill and had to come home to get better. At that time, the Cogswell family were neighbors of the Gallaudets., Dr. Mason Cogswell was a prominent surgeon and very well off. Dr. Cogswell's daughter Alice had been deafened in infancy by a childhood illness associated with a prolonged high fever , probably spotted fever (meningitis).
.He observed Alice's attempts to communicate with her siblings and the neighborhood children at play. Although not trained to teach deaf children, Gallaudet convincingly demonstrated that Alice could learn and should be afforded the opportunity to attend school.
Dr. Cogswell was excited about the prospects for educating his daughter and all deaf children in the country. In just one afternoon, sufficient funds were raised to send Gallaudet to Europe to study the methods of teaching the deaf
and to come up with some kind of communication method that would allow her to master English reading and writing and allow her to learn language.
Toward this end, they decided that Gallaudet would travel to Europe to acquire the teaching techniques used at that time to educate the deaf. The most well known countries at that time, known for their deaf ed methodologies were England and France. England basically used an oral approach—but I guess was quite successful with it. France was using a manualist approach. Galluadet was to travel to each region and learn what he could, make a decision regarding which was most effective, then come back to America and work with Alice.

33. A History… Braidwood Family
Abbe Sicard was the director of the French Institute for the Deaf of Paris
Laurent Clerc
So, off he goes first to England. The Braidwood family, formerly of Edinburgh, Scotland, operated a school for the deaf in London as a family business. They did not wish to share their knowledge to train prospective teachers of the deaf, unless terms could be negotiated to pay the Braidwood family, on a per capita basis, for each deaf child who would be subsequently educated using the Braidwood methods.
Gallaudet would not sign such an agreement or embrace the doctrinal tenets of the Braidwood system. He remained in London for 13 months, but gave up hope of bringing the Braidwood system back to Hartford.
The Abbe Sicard, Director of the French Institute for the Deaf in Paris, was in London at that time with his two deaf assistants, Jean Massieu and Laurent Clerc, giving lectures and demonstrations on the methods used to educate deaf children in France. Gallaudet was familiar with the work of the French School, and had even met with the abbe at the beginning of his visit England, but it was not until he had despaired of reaching his goal with the English that he turned to the French. Gallaudet attended one of the lectures, met with the abbe and his assistants, and accepted their invitation to enter the teacher preparation program at the French school.

34. A History… First American school for the Deaf
Established in Hartford, CT in 1817
Now called the American School for the Deaf
Statue of Gallaudet teaching Cogswell “a”
Galluadet then went to Paris.. Laurent Clerc worked closely with Gallaudet, but there was not sufficient time for Gallaudet to master all of the techniques and manual communication skills before his diminishing funds forced him to book return passage to America. Gallaudet prevailed on Sicard to allow Laurent Clerc to accompany him on the return trip to America to establish an American School. In the fifty-five days of the return voyage, Gallaudet learned the language of signs from Clerc, and Clerc learned English from Gallaudet.
Clerc ended up staying in the US and together with Galluadet, established the first school for the deaf in Connecticut in Hartford in It is still in existence today, and goes by the name of the American School for the Deaf.

35. A History… A statue of Alice Cogswell at Gallaudet University
Some interesting tidbits: Alice Cogswell ended up marrying Alexander Graham Bell—who maintained an interest his entire life in helping HI listeners. In fact, the telephone was originally devised as an assistive listening device for Alice.
In 1856, Connecticut hired Dr. Edward Miner Gallaudet - son of Thomas
Hopkins Gallaudet, founder of the first school for deaf
students in the United States - as the school's first superintendent. Gallaudet's deaf mother, Sophia Fowler Gallaudet, who was the widow of the Rev. Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, became the school's matron. the National College for the Deaf and Dumb was the name of the school initially. The college was renamed in honor of Galluadet in 1893.

36. American Sign Language (ASL)
The only recognized language of the Deaf culture
Unique vocabulary and syntax
French grammar
Space as a linguistic element
CD ROM Ch.08.03
ASL has its own vocabulary and syntax. Because it derives from that early French system used by Clerc, it was developed with deaf people in mind. It relies very heavily on space as a syntactic element. We have no such correlation in spoken English.
Show the CD ROM for ASL
Notice that the speaker didn’t speak orally during ASL. It needs to be translated into spoken English, just like any other foreign language. Gestures and facial expressions are very important and contain important linguistic information. They may seem strange to us who use spoken English.
Your textbook goes into more detail about some of the specifics of ASL in terms of expression and reception. Read these sections, because the author knows way more about this than I do.

37. Cued Speech Developed as a speechreading supplement to spoken English
Provides visual cues
CD ROM Ch.08.01
1. Cued Speech: I mention this last form of a communication system because, at least in the Duluth community, it has gained a considerable amount of popularity among parents of mainstreamed deaf kids. Cued speech has been around for a while (I remember talking about it when I was an undergrad). It is meant to be used with spoken English as a supplement to lipreading. In other words, Cued speech provides visual cues for English phonemes not visible on the lips.
Talk about factors affecting phoneme visibility—place of artic only. Only about 1/3 of English phonemes are visible on the lips. The visual symbols provided by this system just give you some additional linguistic visual cues.
Show CD ROM
Cued Speech, in my opinion, has a very limited use. It certainly can’t stand alone as a communication system—it’s not a language; it doesn’t have grammar or syntax. It is also very limitedly known. Transliterators (interpreters using cued speech) are VERY hard to come by.