Follow-Up of Articulation in the Hard of Hearing Children

Abstract

Intelligibilities of speech sounds were evaluated for 4 years in 29 hard of hearing children with 30-70 dB hearing loss, being provided with speech habilitation, including auditory training, in the special class for the hearing handicapped children. They were 6-11 years of age in the first year.
The following results were obtained;
1. In any age group, their intelligibility scores of speech sounds were increased more distinctly in the first year than in later years.
2. Correlation between their intelligibilities of speech sounds and thir thresholds of hearing showed a yearly decrease.
3. Intelligibility scores such as “vowels”, “k”, “t”, “h”, “p”, “F”, “j”, “w”, “n”, “m”, etc. reached more than 90 per cent in the last year, but those of fricatives and affricatives such as “f”, “s”, “z”, “dz”, etc. remained near 60 per cent.
4. Errors of articulation changed mainly as follows:
1). Omission→normal: 25.2% of total omissions in the first year.
2). Replacement→normal: 34.5%
3). Replacement→near normal→normal: 11.5%
4). Distortion→normal: 32.8%
5). Distortion→near normal→normal: 16.0%
6). Near normal→normal: 53.6%