Case report: Improvement of Speech Intelligibility in a Prelingually Deaf Adult in /g/ and /ga/ Contexts

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. 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. 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. 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.