Speech-reading performance of hearing-impaired students in China

Abstract

This study investigated speech-reading performance of hearing-impaired (HI) students in China. Eighteen students [mean age = 16;4 (age;month)] with HI (averages of 89.5 dB, SD = 13.21) in primarily oral-teaching classrooms and 47 students (mean age = 15;6) with HI (averages of 92 dB, SD = 16.77) from primarily sign-teaching classrooms were asked to identify initials (consonants), simplex finals (monophthongs), and complex finals in standard Chinese (the common language) via speech reading. Both accuracy rate and response time data were collected. Results show that in comparison to students instructed in the sign-based approach, students from oral approach classrooms showed more accurate identification of vowels, but not of consonants. However, the two groups of students did not differ in their speed of identification. In addition, the overall levels of identification accuracy rose, whereas the response times fell, for simplex finals, complex finals, and initial consonants. These results suggest that oral approaches to education for hearing-impaired children facilitate their speech-reading performance for vowels but not for consonants, providing initial evidence from a non-European language for vowel-based visual speech perception training protocols.