Hearing Loss Products and Services
Advertise on Hearing Loss Web
Search This Site or the Web

Free Email Newsletter

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

Hearing Loss Web Banner
Discussion Forum
Hearing Loss Events
Last Update: July 20

 

Home

About Us

Search this Site

New to Hearing Loss?
In the News

Discussion Forum

HOH-LD-News

Advertise

Contact Us

Glossary

Events

 

Issues

Access

Oral Communications

Emergency Planning

Employment

Family

Hearing Aid Affordability

Identity

Law Enforcement

Psychological

Services

 

Medical

Audiology

Causes

Cures

Meniere's Disease

Tinnitus

Local Resources and Events
 
Employment Opportunities
 
Education Opportunities
 

Hearing Loss Products and Services

Advocates and Legal
Alerting Devices
Assistive Listening Devices
Business Services

Captioning

Financial Services
General Stores

Government

Health Products and Services
Hearing Aids
Hearing Aid Accessories
Hearing Aid Batteries
Hearing Aid Maintenance
Hearing Aid Repair
Hearing Dogs
Hearing Loss Organizations
Hints and Tips
Kids' Stuff
Medical Products and Services
Pagers

Publications

Relay Service
Sign Language Materials
Telecommunications Distribution Program

Telephones

Travel

TTYs (TDDs)

TTY Repairs

Two-Way Pagers

Technology

Alerting Devices

Assistive Listening Devices

Cochlear Implants

Hearing Aids

Speech Recognition

Telephones

Two Way Pagers

TTYs (TDDs)

Visual Communications

Links

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

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

LHH Offers Speechreading Videos

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.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Master lip-reader overcomes obstacles

 

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

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

'Hearing' with your eyes; the art of lip reading

 

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

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hearing Lips and Seeing Voices: The McGurk Effect 30 Years Later

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

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Is Big Brother Lipreading You?

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

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Audiovisual Integration and Lipreading Abilities of Older Adults with Normal and Impaired Hearing.

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)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Watch and Hear Better

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