Speechreading ability in children with functional articulation difficulty and in children with normal articulation

Abstract

In administering speech therapy to children with normal hearing and functional articulation difficulties, it was noted that some children made little voluntary use of visual cues; eye contact between therapist and student during direct articulation therapy was infrequent. This observation led the examiner to seek a possible relationship between articulation ability and the ability to use visual cues, specifically in speechreading. To test the hypothesis of a possible inverse relationship between the speechreading ability of a normal hearing sample of children with articulation problems and a matched sample of children with normal speech, the examiner chose twenty-five children with functional articulation difficulties and twenty-five children with normal articulation.