The development of generative lipreading skills in deaf persons using cued speech training

This study evaluated the effects of cued speech, a system of manual cues used in conjunction with spoken words, on lipreading performance of two congenitally and profoundly deaf males. Students received sequential cued speech training via a multiple-baseline design across groups of phonemes (responses). Prior to and following training on each group, two types of probes were administered. Individual phoneme probes assessed acquisition of lipreading skills and generalization to expressive articulation responses. Novel phoneme combination probes assessed generalization of training to untrained phoneme combinations. Results indicated that subjects were able to accurately lipread cued stimuli as a function of cued speech training and that generalization of lipreading skills to novel nonsense syllables occurred. Cued speech training also appeared to facilitate lipreading performance with noncued stimuli, as well as articulation responses. Finally, students' probe performance following training compared favorably with that of an untrained deaf peer who was considered to be a skilled lipreader. Advantages of cued speech over other methods of communication training are discussed.