How can speech production skills be predicted from visual, auditory, and haptic perception skills?

How does speech production relate to speech perception? To investigate the most suitable perceptual factors to predict the production skills of a speaker, we determined the visual acuity for speech movements, the auditory acuity for speech sounds, and the haptic acuity of speech organs, following equivalent protocols in all three modalities. These abilities were linked to the individual’s distinctness of articulation. We tested 26 German cochlear implant wearers and a normal hearing control group of matching age and gender. Our data suggest that in normal hearers, visual, auditory, and haptic skills are suitable to predict the production performance. However, this result could not be confirmed for cochlear implant wearers. Compared with the control group, cochlear implant wearers produced significantly less distinct sibilants s and S, but some of them performed surprisingly well in the test for auditory acuity for sibilants.