Perceptualand Motor Skills, 1791, 72, 88-90.
O Perceptual
and Motor Skills 1991
HEARING-IMPAIRED CHILDREN'S RHYTHM PERCEPTION A N D SPEECH PAUL ARNOLD AND KATE WILLIS University of Manchester Summary.-The role of rhythm in the speech intelligibility of 18 hearing-impaired children, aged 15 years with hearing losses from 40 to 108 db, was investigated. Their perceptual judgement of visual rhythm sequences was superior to that of the hearing controls, but their scores were not correlated with their speech intelligibility.
Bell (1914) noted that hearing people have difficulty in understanding slow speech composed of perfect elementary sounds, while they can understand an imperfect gabble if the accent and rhythm are natural. Hudgins and Numbers (1942) found many timing errors in deaf speech, and calculated that the proportion of variance in intelligibility was about the same as that accounted for by consonant production. Rosenstein (1957) used a tactile rhythm test and found that deaf subjects performed as well as hearing subjects. Hood and Dixon (1979) defined speech rhythm as being composed of intonation, loudness, and temporal factors such as the relative duration of the syllables within a sentence, and the rate of utterance and general timing of a sentence. Nickerson (1975) in a review of deaf speech noted that their rate of speech is slower and has more and longer pauses. These pauses are combined with an unusual stress pattern, which results in speech with an unnatural rhythm. Kracke (1975) presented pairs of rhythm sequences, which deaf children had to judge as the same or different. Pairs of repeated sequences were presented either auditoridy or cutaneously. Deaf and hearing both produced near-ceiling effects and so did not differ from each other in either modality condition. The elements composing sequences had variable duration and these were confounded with the duration of inter-elementintervals. Darrow (1979) also provided evidence that the deaf do not lack rhythmic motor behavior. The present experiment was designed to establish the role of visual rhythm perception in hearing-impaired speech intelligibility. This role is a possibility due to the influence of speech sequence reading in learning to speak.
Subjects
Eighteen hearing-impaired subjects, 7 males and 11 females, with a 'Send requests for reprints to P. Arnold, Department of Psychology, University of Manchester, W c h e s t e r MI3 9PL, England. We thank staff and pupils of the Thomasson School, Bolton, and Andrew Gregory for designing the equipment.
HEARING IMPAIRMENT, RHYTHM PERCEPTION, SPEECH
89
mean loss of 73.5 (SD = 20.7, range 40 to 108 dB), at 500, 1000, 2000, and 4000 Hz in the better ear, and with a mean age of 15:2 (SD= 1.01). Subjects with a range of losses were selected to establish the role of degree of loss on rhythm perception. All were educated orally with no use of sign language or sign systems. The nine hearing controls, 4 boys and 5 girls, were younger, aged 1O:I to 1O:lO. Apparatus The purpose-built device produced a Morse code form of visual rhythm sequence. Ten different sequences were presented and the light-flash stimuli length could be varied. Flashes were either long (700 msec.) or short (150 msec.). Each was separated by a gap of 350 msec. from the next. Sequences were presented in pairs, and the subject judged them same or different. There was a 5-sec. interval between sequence pairs. Subjects first compared long and short cardboard strips and then long and short light flashes, to make sure they understood "same" and "different." All were then given practice items. The subjects responded by saying "same" or "different." Speech Intelligibility This was measured by the picture description method of Markides (1978). Each child was shown pictures representing sentences, which they had to describe and which were recorded. There were two practice items. Recordings were scored by two "naive" listeners, and the number of words heard correctly by them scored. RESULTS The hearing-impaired group had a mean corrected score of 6.17 (SD = 2.18) on the rhythm comparison test, and the hearing group a mean of 4.44 (SD = 1.01). One-way analysis of variance showed the performance of the hearing-impaired group to be significantly superior to that of the hearing (F,,*,= 5.02, p
O Perceptual
and Motor Skills 1991
HEARING-IMPAIRED CHILDREN'S RHYTHM PERCEPTION A N D SPEECH PAUL ARNOLD AND KATE WILLIS University of Manchester Summary.-The role of rhythm in the speech intelligibility of 18 hearing-impaired children, aged 15 years with hearing losses from 40 to 108 db, was investigated. Their perceptual judgement of visual rhythm sequences was superior to that of the hearing controls, but their scores were not correlated with their speech intelligibility.
Bell (1914) noted that hearing people have difficulty in understanding slow speech composed of perfect elementary sounds, while they can understand an imperfect gabble if the accent and rhythm are natural. Hudgins and Numbers (1942) found many timing errors in deaf speech, and calculated that the proportion of variance in intelligibility was about the same as that accounted for by consonant production. Rosenstein (1957) used a tactile rhythm test and found that deaf subjects performed as well as hearing subjects. Hood and Dixon (1979) defined speech rhythm as being composed of intonation, loudness, and temporal factors such as the relative duration of the syllables within a sentence, and the rate of utterance and general timing of a sentence. Nickerson (1975) in a review of deaf speech noted that their rate of speech is slower and has more and longer pauses. These pauses are combined with an unusual stress pattern, which results in speech with an unnatural rhythm. Kracke (1975) presented pairs of rhythm sequences, which deaf children had to judge as the same or different. Pairs of repeated sequences were presented either auditoridy or cutaneously. Deaf and hearing both produced near-ceiling effects and so did not differ from each other in either modality condition. The elements composing sequences had variable duration and these were confounded with the duration of inter-elementintervals. Darrow (1979) also provided evidence that the deaf do not lack rhythmic motor behavior. The present experiment was designed to establish the role of visual rhythm perception in hearing-impaired speech intelligibility. This role is a possibility due to the influence of speech sequence reading in learning to speak.
Subjects
Eighteen hearing-impaired subjects, 7 males and 11 females, with a 'Send requests for reprints to P. Arnold, Department of Psychology, University of Manchester, W c h e s t e r MI3 9PL, England. We thank staff and pupils of the Thomasson School, Bolton, and Andrew Gregory for designing the equipment.
HEARING IMPAIRMENT, RHYTHM PERCEPTION, SPEECH
89
mean loss of 73.5 (SD = 20.7, range 40 to 108 dB), at 500, 1000, 2000, and 4000 Hz in the better ear, and with a mean age of 15:2 (SD= 1.01). Subjects with a range of losses were selected to establish the role of degree of loss on rhythm perception. All were educated orally with no use of sign language or sign systems. The nine hearing controls, 4 boys and 5 girls, were younger, aged 1O:I to 1O:lO. Apparatus The purpose-built device produced a Morse code form of visual rhythm sequence. Ten different sequences were presented and the light-flash stimuli length could be varied. Flashes were either long (700 msec.) or short (150 msec.). Each was separated by a gap of 350 msec. from the next. Sequences were presented in pairs, and the subject judged them same or different. There was a 5-sec. interval between sequence pairs. Subjects first compared long and short cardboard strips and then long and short light flashes, to make sure they understood "same" and "different." All were then given practice items. The subjects responded by saying "same" or "different." Speech Intelligibility This was measured by the picture description method of Markides (1978). Each child was shown pictures representing sentences, which they had to describe and which were recorded. There were two practice items. Recordings were scored by two "naive" listeners, and the number of words heard correctly by them scored. RESULTS The hearing-impaired group had a mean corrected score of 6.17 (SD = 2.18) on the rhythm comparison test, and the hearing group a mean of 4.44 (SD = 1.01). One-way analysis of variance showed the performance of the hearing-impaired group to be significantly superior to that of the hearing (F,,*,= 5.02, p
