Clinical aspects of vibrotactile devices with deaf children

Abstract

Longitudinal data will be presented on the speech perception and production abilities of 15 deaf children who use a vibrotactile aid (Tactaid II). Their performance is being compared to that of deaf children who use either a single- or multichannel implant. Initial findings indicate that the performance of the subjects with implants, even those with single-channel devices, is superior to that of the subjects who use the tactile aid. The subjects who achieved the highest scores with the tactile aid tended to have more sophisticated cognitive and linguistic skills that permitted them to develop strategies to decode the vibratory patterns. The importance of prior knowledge of the language in decoding information perceived via the skin is also supported by the data collected from postlingually deaf adults using the same tactile aid. The implications of generalizing data collected on adults to prelingually deaf children will be discussed. [Work supported by NIH.]