Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students' Memory of Lectures with Speech-to-Text and Interpreting/Note Taking Services

Abstract

In one investigation with 48 deaf and hard-of-hearing (hh) high school students and a second investigation with 48 deaf/hh college students, all viewed one lecture with an interpreter and one with the C-Print®speech-to-text support service. High school students retained more lecture information when they viewed speech-to-text support, compared to interpreter support, and when they studied note taker notes or a hard copy of the text after viewing the lecture, compared to no opportunity to study. For college students, however, there was no difference between retention with these two kinds of support or with study of notes, compared to no study. For the college investigation, there was a three-way interaction due to markedly better performance on a multiple-choice than on a sentence-completion test when students viewed an interpreter and did not study notes. This result may have reflected difficulty in comprehending unfamiliar terms. Reading proficiency was also related to retention.