Choice of communication mode at home and speechreading performance of adolescents with hearing impairment in China.

The ability to speechread is often critical for persons with hearing impairment (HI), who may depend on speechreading to access the spoken language and interact with the hearing world. It is not clear, however, whether the primary mode of communication at home will influence speechreading abilities of young adults with HI even when they are enrolled in the same school with the same communication or instructional methods. Thirty-two hearing-impaired adolescents whose parents chose spoken language as the primary mode of communication of the family (the SPOKEN group) and thirty-two hearing-impaired adolescents with sign language as the primary mode of communication of the family (the SIGN group) were administered a Chinese speechreading battery consisting of tests at monosyllabic word, disyllabic word and sentence levels. The SPOKEN group was able to accurately identify significantly more monosyllabic words, disyllabic words, and sentences by speechreading than the SIGN group. In addition, mean accuracy rates of identifying disyllabic words via speechreading were higher than single words and sentences, and identifying sentences via speechreading took longer time than single words and phrases. These results suggest that the differences in speechreading of HI students may result not only from different educational approaches, but also from family language communication experiences, and this difference may exist before the students with HI start formal schooling.