speech reading as a communications strategy for people with hearing loss
Speech reading can be an effective communications strategy for
people with hearing loss.
Speech reading is method of using visual clues from a speaker’s face
to decode the contents of spoken language. We all speechread to some
extent, but many people with hearing loss rely on it to provide a large
percentage of their communications.
Speech readers attempt to decode spoken language by deciphering
patterns on the lips. Anyone who has ever tried it knows that it isn’t
easy. Furthermore, it seems to be a talent, in the sense that some people
are extremely good at it, while others just can’t seem to get it.
Researchers estimate that only about 40 % of the sounds of normal
speech are clearly visible on the lips.
Sounds which look the same are the bane of speech readers. For
example, the letters ‘b’, ‘m’, and ‘p’ look virtually
identical on the lips. The speech reader must rely on contextual and
other clues to differentiate between the words ‘bat’, ‘mat’, and
‘pat’.
Other troublesome sounds are those that are formed in the back of the
mouth or in the throat. ‘g’ and ‘k’ are examples of these sounds
that produce very little visible evidence on the lips.
Additional problems for speechreaders are caused by things that
obstruct a clear view of the speaker’s face. People who hold a hand in
front of their mouth or turn their backs on a speechreader quickly
prevent communication. Also, men whose facial hair covers their lips are
difficult to speechread.
More Information:
The
Royal National Institute for Deaf People
November 2001 - The League for the Hard of Hearing
offers some great speechreading tapes that feature Gene Wilder.
April 2005 - Here's Steve Silverman with some great
suggestions for both the speaker and the speechreader!
December 2005 - Here's Mary Allen, Ph.D., of the
University of South Australia, with her thoughts on computer based
speechreading instruction you can use at home.
March 2006 - Master
lip-reader overcomes obstacles
August 2006 - 'Hearing' with your eyes; the art of lip
reading
June 2007 - Hearing Lips and Seeing Voices: The
McGurk Effect 30 Years Later
June 2007 - Is Big Brother Lipreading You?
October 2007 - Audiovisual Integration and Lipreading
Abilities of Older Adults with Normal and Impaired Hearing.
December 2007 - Clear Speech for Communication
Partners
June 2008 - Watch and Hear Better
March 2009 - Tactile Devices May Aid
Speechreading
September 2009 - Computers Are Better Lipreaders
than Humans!~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
November 2001
The League for Hard of Hearing (LHH) offers a set of Speechreading
videos entitled "I See What You're Saying". Award winning
celebrity Gene Wilder brings his unique humor and talent as an actor,
writer, and director to this set of videotapes, which provide
instruction and practice in speechreading. Each tape combines
entertaining vignettes with effective strategies to improve
communication skills. People who are deaf or hard of hearing and
professionals teaching speechreading will find these tapes an amusing
tool to enhance visual awareness and improve skills, making real life
communication situations easier and more fulfilling. A handbook with
suggestions for effective use of the videos and additional practice
materials is included.
V730 2-tape set, including handbooks - - $90
V731 Volume I -- Orientation, 110 minutes, tape, handbook - - $55
V732 Volume II -- Practice tape, 65 minutes, handbook - - $45
V733 Additional copies of the handbook, package of 12 - - $15
For additional information, please visit the League for Hard of
Hearing website at http://www.lhh.org.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
March
2006
On
the surface, there's nothing remarkable about Joan Davies, who hosts
Polk Place, an informative, Polk County government-access television
show, chatting smoothly with a variety of guests. But if you turn your
head away from her while talking to her, she can't understand a thing.
Davies is deaf -- and a master lip-reader, who after exhaustive practice
has almost completely rid herself of the monotone, high-pitched voice
common to deaf people. On TV, when her concentration is at its peak,
you'd never guess she's deaf. Full
Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
August
2006
After the
World Cup final this month, speculation swirled around the head butt
France's Zinedine Zidane delivered to the chest of Italian Marco Materazzi.
Various groups have hired lip readers to view the tape to decipher the
words between the two athletes.
Full Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
June 2007
McGurk, then a senior developmental psychologist at
the University of Surrey, in England, and his research assistant
MacDonald were studying speech perception in infants. For some reason,
they asked their recording technician to create a videotape of a mother
speaking, with the audio syllable /ba/ dubbed onto a visual /ga/. When
they played the tape, both McGurk and MacDonald and others perceived the
syllable /da/. How could an auditory /ba/ + a visual /ga/ = a perceived
/da/? The researchers finally realized that the unexpected
perception of /da/ resulted from the bisensory integration of the
incompatible auditory and visual stimuli. This audio-visual illusion has
become known as the McGurk effect, which continues to this day as a
benchmark in the study of human sensory integration. Full
Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
June 2007
Big Brother is now doing our job. The British
government, perhaps no longer interested in its stiff upper lip, instead
wants to read other people's lips. To do this, lip reading technology
will be added to some of the four million or so surveillance cameras in
order to identify terrorists and criminals by watching what everyone
says. Apparently automated lip reading systems already exist, but
they're relatively inaccurate and require good lighting and static
heads. Richard Harvey, a computer vision expert at the University of
East Anglia in Norwich, and colleagues at Surrey University have secured
funding for a project to further develop this lip reading technology.
The project will collect lip reading data that will be used to create
systems that can automatically convert lip motions into readable text.
Full
Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Research Articles
Ear & Hearing. 28(5):656-668, September 2007.
Tye-Murray, Nancy 1; Sommers, Mitchell S. 2; Spehar, Brent 1
Abstract:
Objective: The purpose of the current study was to examine how age-related
hearing impairment affects lipreading and auditory-visual integration. The
working hypothesis for the investigation was that presbycusic hearing loss
would increase reliance on visual speech information, resulting in better
lipreading and auditory-visual integration in older persons who have
hearing impairment, compared with older persons who have normal hearing.
Design:
This study compared the performance of 53 adults with normal hearing
(above age 65) and 24 adults with mild-to-moderate hearing impairment
(above age 65) on auditory-only (A), visual-only (V), and auditory-visual
(AV) speech perception, using consonants, words, and sentences as stimuli.
All testing was conducted in the presence of multi-talker background
babble, set individually for each participant and each type of stimulus,
to obtain approximately equivalent A performance across the groups. In
addition, we compared the two groups of participants on measures of
auditory enhancement, visual enhancement, and auditory-visual integration
that were derived from the A, V and AV performance scores.
Results:
In general, the two groups of participants performed similarly on measures
of V and AV speech perception. The one exception to this finding was that
the participants with hearing impairment performed significantly better
than the participants with normal hearing on V identification of words.
Measures of visual enhancement, auditory enhancement, and auditory-visual
integration did not differ as a function of hearing status.
Conclusions:
Overall, the results of the current study suggest that despite increased
reliance on visual speech information, older adults who have hearing
impairment do not exhibit better V speech perception or auditory-visual
integration than age-matched individuals who have normal hearing. These
findings indicate that inclusion of V and AV speech perception measures
can provide important information for designing maximally effective
audiological rehabilitation strategies.
Full Story
(Registration Required)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
June 2008
At the end of the [speechreading] course, I could
only admit to one thing: I remained a poor speechreader even after our
exhaustive training regimens. Others had been excellent lipreaders all
along, able to spy with ease on what others were saying at a far-distant
table in a noisy restaurant. I was unconvinced back then of the validity
of speechreading lessons, and doubts remained with me throughout my
teaching and clinical career. I have no doubts, however, of the value of
combining auditory and visual cues for speech understanding, especially in
noisy conditions. By watching the speaker's face and body while listening,
we can increase speech recognition considerably over auditory-alone
conditions. It's not unusual for speech intelligibility to increase from
20 percent when listening in noise without vision, to 80 percent or more
when the speaker is seen as well as heard. This four-fold performance
improvement is based upon the principle of "bisensory integration," in
which combining two senses produce more information together than would be
predicted from merely adding the performance of the two senses separately.
Full Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
March 2009
Lip reading is a critical means of communication
for many deaf people, but it has a drawback: Certain consonants (for
example, p and b) can be nearly impossible to distinguish by sight alone.
Tactile devices, which translate sound waves into vibrations that can be
felt by the skin, can help overcome that obstacle by conveying nuances of
speech that can't be gleaned from lip reading. Researchers in MIT's
Sensory Communication Group are working on a new generation of such
devices, which could be an important tool for deaf people who rely on lip
reading and can't use or can't afford cochlear implants. The cost of the
device and the surgery make cochlear implants prohibitive for many people,
especially in developing countries. [snip] Moallem and Charlotte Reed,
senior research scientist in MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics and
leader of the project, say the software they are developing could be
compatible with current smart phones, allowing such devices to be
transformed into unobtrusive tactile aids for the deaf. "Anyone who has a
smart phone already has much of what they would need to run the program,"
including a microphone, digital signal-processing capability, and a
rudimentary vibration system, says Moallem
Full Story
