Teaching vowels to profoundly hearing-impaired speakers using glossometry.

Glossometry was used to teach the four point vowels (/i,ae,u,a/) to 6 profoundly hearing-impaired children. Prior to treatment, all subjects evidenced centralized tongue positions during vowel productions. After 15 to 20 fifty-minute training sessions over 3- to 4-week time periods, all subjects showed greater diversification of tongue postures for the vowels, especially in tongue height. Listener identifications were generally better after therapy. The training results suggested that visually presented models and feedback of tongue positions can facilitate more appropriate tongue postures and improve vowel intelligibility by hearing-impaired speakers.