THE SPEECH OF ADULTS WITH ACQUIRED PROFOUND HEARING LOSSES .1. A PERCEPTUAL EVALUATION

Two audio recordings of ten adventitiously profoundly deaf Australian adults and ten age- and sex-matched controls reading a standard passage were played to a panel of ten normally hearing Swedish listeners. One recording consisted of the full speech signal. The second recording presented only the output from a Laryngograph. The listeners were asked to listen to each speaker and then judge whether he or she was adventitiously deafened or normally hearing. When listening to the full speech signal the listeners were able to identify correctly the speakers' hearing status on 92.5% of presentations. The identification rate fell to 65.6% when the listeners only heard the Laryngograph output. If a rating of adventitious deafness was made when listening to the full speech signal, the listeners were asked to state which aspects of the speaker's speech had led them to make this judgement. Of a total of 166 responses 33 related to overall voice quality, 59 to suprasegmental aspects and 74 to segmental aspects. The results of the study are discussed and compared to the literature.