Speech modification by a deaf child through dynamic orometric modeling and feedback.

Baseline physiologic, acoustic, and phonetic data are presented to characterize speech production of a 3 1/2-year-old deaf girl prior to a visual articulatory modeling and feedback program. These observations suggest that she used an articulatory strategy based on visual information about lip and jaw movements rather than tongue positions as a primary means of differentiating speech sounds. The training program which followed used instrumentally generated displays of tongue position and movements to teach production of the (i) and (a) vowels in single and bisyllable word contexts. Linguapalatal contact patterns for the consonant (t) were then introduced and taught in combinations with the vowels. Goal articulatory gestures were learned rapidly with respect to both positional and timing features of speech.