LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 16:8 August 2016
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
         N. Nadaraja Pillai, Ph.D.
         Renuga Devi, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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Impact of Speechifi Device on
Communication Skills of Children with Hearing Impairment

Pravesh Arya, Ph.D. (SLP)
Soniya Gupta, BASLP

Abstract

There is an increased prevalence of hearing impairment exist in recent population. This mandates a thorough hearing evaluation for every case of speech-language delay; this will help in the early diagnosis of hearing loss, allowing proper management to be instituted as early as possible. Apart from manual treatment, there is only handful of devices and mobile applications developed to assist children with hearing impairment in improving their communication skills. A general objective of the present study is to introduce an electronic device named “Speechifi” that can assist communication by persons having communication difficulties through tactile, auditory and visual modality. Another and more specific objective of the present study was to provide effectiveness of the device that is portable, battery-operated and constructed to be held in the hand of a user to improve communication skills of children with hearing impairment. In this paper the authors made an attempt to present a speech-enabled device named Speechifi. This device is found to be useful in the improving speech and communication skills of children with hearing impairment who participated in the present study. Speechifi enables rapid development of usable speech which allows the user to be hands-free when they use the multimodality of the device themselves when they want to.

Keywords: Speechifi, Hearing Impairment, Speech training, communication

Introduction

Hearing undoubtedly plays a primary part in the process of language acquisition. There are studies stated that approximately 80% of new words are learned by overhearing, which signifies that children learn language through exposure in their environment. They acquire words that they hear or signs that they see from the adults communicating with one another. But for a child with hearing loss, there is an exception as they have to be the talker before they will be able to detect and/or comfortably hear what is being said. To develop spoken language, a child must be able to hear speech clearly and also hear themselves through auditory feedback. Children with very limited hearing or those who are hard of hearing but do not (consistently) wear amplification will not be able to develop language and speech at the same rate as age peers. Several investigations have attempted to determine the characteristics and intelligibility of speech of individuals with hearing impairment, but there is scarce of the research studies to determine the effectiveness or impact of such speech training devices on the children with hearing impairment. This showed an immense need to conduct a study to determine the impact of a battery operated multi-modality based speech training device.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.


Pravesh Arya, Ph.D. (SLP)
Lead Research Associate
Innoflaps Remedy Pvt. Ltd.


Soniya Gupta, BASLP
Clinical Consultant
Innoflaps Remedy Pvt. Ltd.

Address for Correspondence:
Innoflaps Remedy Pvt. Ltd.
99 Ground Floor
New Rajdhani Enclave
Preet Vihar
East Delhi-92
India
research@innoflaps.com

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