The relationship between residual hearing and speech intelligibility - Is there a measure that could predict a prelingually profoundly deaf child's possibility to develop intelligible speech?

The relationship between speech intelligibility of eleven prelingually deaf children and their residual hearing capabilities was investigated. Audio recordings were made of the deaf children, ranging from eleven to seventeen years of age, when they read so-called Helen-questions. Tapes containing the Helen-questions were played to inexperienced and experienced normally hearing listeners to measure the intelligibility of each child's speech. The speech intelligibility scores were related to the amount of residual hearing, measured as the better-ear average of pure-tone thresholds at 500, 1000 and 2000 Hz, shape of audiogram and the degree to which the children could use their residual hearing. The purpose was to investigate if any of these measures of residual hearing might be a good predictor of a prelingually deaf child's possibility to develop intelligible speech. The best correlation was found between the children's ability to use their residual hearing for speech perception and the intelligibility of their speech.