Defects in Speech in Relation to Defects in Hearing

Abstract

on the social and economic success of civilized man is so obvious that it seems not to require any extended comment. And yet this very fact may give the reason that no thoroughly scientific study of the interrelationship of speech and hearing has been undertaken until recently.A deaf child is put into a special school, where he is taught to convey his thoughts manually. In earlier days, it was taken for granted that one could not educate him in the broader sense, and so his training was largely vocational, and the one vocation for which every such child seemed foreordained was printing. Every deaf-mute had to become a printer, whether he wanted to or not.Moreover, the "deaf and dumb" were naturally supposed to be "stupid," and so they were kept in a state of more or less blissful ignorance all their lives, having few continued contacts with perfectly normal men and women. No wonder they were thought to be "queer" and "abnormal" and entirely outside the bounds of the consideration and courtesy commonly accorded to "normal" men and women. The die was cast; their lot was predetermined, and, while kind and sym¬ pathetic neighbors not infrequently declared that it was "too bad" and "very unfortunate" and a "heart sorrow" to parents and relatives, it was the will of Divine Providence, and nobody could do much about it save to "put the child into an Institution."No wonder, again, that when it became known what Anne Macy had done for the blind and deaf Helen Keller the world gasped with astonishment. Essays, articles and books came tumbling from the press, most of them stressing the "genius" of the unfortunate little girl who was so "bright" that she had actually learned to talk and hear through the sense of touch. Prof. Alexander Graham Bell was interested in the Keller child as a "phenomenon," but it is doubtful if he ever dreamed that she could be educated even in the simplest sense, to say nothing of earning a degree from Radcliffe College ! It required the far seeing, painstaking, scientifically minded, ingenious Miss Macy

Cinefluorographic Investigation of Velopharyngeal Function in Selected Deaf Speakers

“…One frequently hears the term 'deaf quality' used to refer to a certain subjectively defined entity which is apparently meaningful to some individuals who have had experience in training the deaf. Relatively few studies have been undertaken to investigate the physiological bases of this 'typical deaf speech ' [6], Nasality has often been m entioned in the literature as an identi fiable feature in the speech of the deaf [4,5,9,10,12,13,15,17], Little objective evidence has been presented, however, to suggest abnormal velopharyngeal function. Since it is generally agreed that nasality is related to velopharyngeal competence, this study was designed to investigate velopharyngeal valving in selected deaf speakers by means of cinefluorography.…”

Simultaneous Oral and Nasal Airflow during Stop Consonant Production by Hearing-Impaired Speakers

“…Characteristics which have been described as typical of hearing-impaired speech include slow rate (Voelker, 1935(Voelker, , 1938Colton and Cooker, 1968), high pitch (Haycock, 1942;Ewing and Ewing, 1946;Boone, 1966), breathiness (Peterson, 1946;Silverman, 1960), misarticulations (Hudgins, 1934;Hudgins and Numbers, 1942;Silverman, 1960;Calvert, 1963\ D¡Carlo, 1964Schwab, 1964), nasality (Voorhees, 1940;Haycock, 1942;Hudgins and Numbers, 1942;Numbers, 1946;Peterson, 1946;Miller, 1960;Silverman, 1960), faulty rhythm and faulty intonation patterns (Hudgins and Numbers. 1942;Silverman, 1960;Schwab, 1964).…”