The Relationship Between Speech Intelligibility and Related Factors of Speakers in Prelingually Hearing Impaired Children Using Hearing Aids

Yoon, Misun; Lee, Yoonkyoung; Sim, Hyun-Sub

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Commun Sci Disord. 2001;5(2): 1-15.

Misun Yoon^` , Yoonkyoung Lee^` , and Hyun-Sub Sim^`

윤미선(Misun Yoon)| 이윤경(Yoonkyoung Lee)| 심현섭(Hyun-Sub Sim)

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to evaluate the relationship between the speech intelligibility and related factor s of speaker in hearing impaired children using hearing aids. For the purpose of the study, the following 6 factor s were selected as the related factor s of speaker based on the previou s studies : (1) chronological ages, (2) the fir st diagnostic date of hearing los s, (3) language ability , (4) articulation ability , (5) the degree of hearing los s, and (6) duration of education . T he subject s were 20 prelingually hearing impaired children between the ages of 5 and 10 who have been using oral communication mode everyday . T heir hearing losses ranged from 70 dB to 130 dB in better ear . Speech intelligibility , articulation ability and language ability were measured by u sing word intelligibility test , PCC (Percent of Con sonant Correct ) and two test s (reception : Korean Peabody Picture Vocabulary T est ; expres sion : Korean Boston Naming T est ), respectively . T he result s of the study were as follows : (1) the speech intelligibility had a strong positive correlation with three related factor s of speaker s : the articulation ability (r = .87), the receptive language ability ( r = .66), the expres sive language ability factor (r = .62); (2) the speech intelligibility had a negative correlation with the degrees of hearing loss (r = - .51) at the level of .01; and (3) the articulation ability alone explained the 76 % of speech intelligibility . T hese result s suggest that the articulation ability factor appeared to be most influential among the 6 related factor s of the speaker , which affect s the speech intelligibility of prelingually hearing impaired children with hearing aids on . From the clinical per spective, the result s also suggest that the treatment focused on improving the articulation ability could help to enhance verbal communication ability of hearing impaired children .