The assessment of communication handicaps in the hearing-impaired using comparative measures of lipreading, auditory, and audio-visual speech discrimination

McCormick, Barry (1980) The assessment of communication handicaps in the hearing-impaired using comparative measures of lipreading, auditory, and audio-visual speech discrimination. University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.

Record type: Thesis (Doctoral)

Abstract

This study reviews the literature on communication handicap assessment and then describes the development of a new test consisting of a series of everyday sentences from which measurements have been made of hearing aid users' speech discrimination skills under three presentation mode, namely, Visual(Lipreading), Auditory in noise, and Audio-Visual in noise. The test, known as the VAAV test, Was been evaluated in an aural rehabilitation setting on hearing aid users both at the time of and then one year following the provision of hearing aids. Young normally-hearing subjects and experienced lipreadars have also been tested. Studies into factors relating to the presentation of the test have shown that the scores for live and video-recorded presentations of the VMV lipreading material did not differ significantly and neither did the scores for monochrome and colour video presentations. Studies into the application of the test in a rehabilitation programme setting have revealed significant improvements in the lipreading scores for two groups of subjects when tested before and 10 months after receiving short periods' of rehabilitation advice. A control group which lacked the advice did not show improvements. Measures of aided auditory and audiovisual speech discrimination in noise obtained from the VAAV test have been shown to relate significantly to other measures of hearing handicap, namely, averaged pure tone thresholds and self reports of handicap as measured by the Hearing Measurement Scale.

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