Abstract
Objectives: Unintelligible speech is one of the main problems Deaf people have. In this project we taught speech production to a deaf adult in order to prove the possibility of learning intelligible speech without hearing and by applying other senses like tactile, kinesthetic and visual senses.
Materials & Methods: We used two methods for speech intelligibility assessment before & after therapy: (1) Item Identification and (2) Rating Scale. The intelligibility of the /g/ sound and /ga/ syllable was evaluated on the basis of judgments of three native Persian-speakers who were not familiar with deaf speech. This single-subject intervention lasted for 12 sessions, through one-hour sessions held thrice a week.
Results: Based on item-identification, intelligibility of the contexts under study improved from unintelligible to intelligible level. Based on the rating scale, the improvement rate was judged at 100% by the three normal-hearing listeners.
Conclusions: Our findings showed significant improvements in the intelligibility of deaf speech following treatment. So we could claim that acquiring intelligible speech can be possible – at least in the studied contexts – without any auditory feedback and through the application of other senses.