In special education of children with impaired hearing, the use of hearing aids, auditory training and speechreading are very important. So, expecting that this study will help their education and rehabilitation plan, we investigated the effect of speechreading and the use of hearing aids on speech discrimination in children with impaired hearing with 37 children with impaired hearing equal in intelligence, academic achievement, time of onset, type of hearing impairment, experience of speechreading training and auditory training, normal eye sight and visual skills. The result are listed as follows : 1) In all cases except in case 1, their speech discrimination were depended on speechreading. 2) Under the condition of use of hearing aids without speechreading, children with moderate hearing loss obtained 16.6%, children with moderately severe hearing loss 4.0%, children with severe hearing loss 1.5%, and children with profound hearing loss 0.2%. 3) Under the condition of combined use of
audition and speechreading, children with moderate hearing loss obtained 41.3%, children with moderately severe hearing loss 24.2%, children with severe hearing loss 22.0%, and children with profound hearing loss 18.8%. 4) There was no significant difference between the condition of combined use of audition and speechreading and the condition of the use of hearing aids without speechreading. 5) In all cases their speech detection threshold almost amounted to the normal level through the use of hearing aids. 6) Judging from the above results, the effect of auditory training is expected and early training and the establishment of better training method are keenly needed.
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