Speech Perception and Production Skills of Students With Impaired Hearing From Oral and Total Communication Education Settings

Abstract

This study examined the degree to which students with profoundly impaired hearing who had been educated in oral and total communication (TC) environments developed auditory and speech skills. The sample consisted of 227 16- and 17-year-old students with profoundly impaired hearing: 127 from TC programs (63 with normal-hearing parents and 64 with deaf parents) and 100 from oral programs. Subject groups were matched in terms of age, unaided residual hearing, and IQ. On average, students from oral programs acquired more intelligible speech and made significantly better use of their limited residual hearing than did the TC students. This finding held for all TC students—those with deaf parents as well as those with normal-hearing parents. Although results of this study indicate that auditory and speech production skills are comparatively well developed in students who have consistently used spoken language throughout the day as the primary means of communicating, other factors associated with this oral sample, such as early amplification, consistent hearing aid use, early education, and parental support, may also be necessary for the development of good spoken language skills.

Factors Associated with Development of Speech Production Skills in Children Implanted by Age Five

“…Several variables have been suggested to play roles in the variability of speech production performance noted in children with cochlear implants. One of the most important variables suggested to play a key role is mode of communication Geers & Moog, 1992). Modes of communication may incorporate signs or gestures, as well as listening and speaking.…”

Beliefs, Practices, and Expectations of Oral Teachers of the Deaf

“…Traditionally and most frequently, researchers have been interested in comparisons of the efficacy of different modes of communication for child learning outcomes (Geers & Moog, 1992;Lederberg & Spencer, 2001), and the effects of different amplification devices (Ching et al, 2005;Meyer et al 1998;Pittman et al, 2005). They have investigated the effects of age of diagnosis (Prendergast et al, 2002;Yoshinaga-Itano et al, 1998) and age at entry into early intervention (Calderon & Naidu, 1998), and teacher expectations of child learning (Wu & Brown, 2004).…”

An exploration of demographic bias in a questionnaire survey of hearing-impaired children: Implications for comparisons of children with and without cochlear implants

“…Poorer outcomes in various domains have been reported to be associated with greater levels of hearing loss [6,[8][9][10], additional disabilities [11][12][13][14], lower socio-economic status [13,[15][16][17][18][19][20] and belonging to an ethnic minority [13,15,17,21,22]. Better outcomes have been reported to be associated with a later age of onset [6,23], older age [6,[24][25][26][27], being female [17,18,20,26,28], having hearing-impaired parents [13] and using oral communication to a greater extent than non-oral communication [19,20,[29][30][31][32].…”