Student 2 is a young adult female with a profound sensorineural hearing loss of unknown etiology. Despite an extensive history of speech instruction (age 4 through high school) she is unintelligible. Voice is characterized by severe tension with poor coordination of respiration and phonation. She reported first receiving hearing aids around the age of three to four, but stopped using amplification when ten years old. She resumed hearing aid use after enrolling in speech instruction at RIT/NTID. She is currently in her fifth ten-week quarter of instruction. At this point she is able to produce speech with a relaxed voice and has steadily expanded her phonetic repertoire, although rate and prosody continue to impede intelligibility. Computerized visual feedback equipment has been instrumental in facilitating instruction/learning.

Student Age: 20 years

Degree of deafness/PTA: Profound sensorineural loss bilaterally with no hearing responses beyond 750Hz for either ear

Etiology: unknown

Age of onset/Date of detection: Birth/8 months of age

Use of amplification: Student reported using aids from 3-4 years until the age of 10; no amplification from 10-18 years; currently wearing BTE on RE all the time

Speech-language therapy history: Attended individual speech therapy from four years of age through the end of her junior year in high school; did not work on voice

Educational history: Mainstreamed in public school with support services (interpreter and note taker)

Preferred mode of communication: ASL with people who know sign language; writing, gestures, and speech when communicating with people unfamiliar with sign language

Diagnostic Results

Speech Intelligibility
NTID Write-Down Test: 8% (1.3 on a 1=low to 5=high scale).

Rated as 1.0 in reading the Rainbow Passage (Fairbanks)

Voice (Qualitative)

NTID Voice Evaluation: Severe vocal tension which at times results in inability to sustain phonation;
severe problem coordinating respiration and phonation; severe problem with
prosody (blending and co-articulation); loudness was much below appropriate
intensity levels.

Speech/Voice (comprehensive)

Fisher-Logemann Test of Articulation Competence: 84.34% total error; 85.07% consonant error; 81.25% vowel error. Of consonant errors, 46% were omissions, 37% were substitutions, and 17% were distortions.

Fisher-Logemann Sentence Articulation Test: 84% consonant error. Of consonant errors, 76% were omissions, 19% were substitutions, and 4% were distortions.

Language

Written language sample, a retelling of the NTID Dormitory Picture Series: accurate description of the story depicted in the picture series; inconsistent grammatical errors involving determiners, prepositions, and noun-verb tense agreement which did not impede comprehensibility.

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