Teaching speech skills to deaf children by computer-based speech training

Prelingually deaf children very rarely develop speech spontaneously. Speech is almost always developed through training, using the visibility of phonetic features, reading, tactile sensation and, ifpossible, residual hearing. These inputs severely limit speech perception potential and cause deaf children to make unavoidable articulatory deviations that affect their ability to signal meaning differences in spoken language. Through visual feedback, it is possible for a deaf child to establish an orosensory motor control of his speech. Computer-aided speech training presents meaninal visual feedback of distinctive contrasts that are not visible via speech reading and consequently difficult to produce correctly. IBM's "SpeechViewer 11" has been used in the schools for deaf children as well as in the pre-school training of severely hearing-impaired children in Sweden. When it is used as a supplement to traditional speech training methoh offered by the therapist, it has been shown to be an objective and effective tool in helping to increase the intelligibility of the speech of deaf children.