Training auditory-visual speech reception in adults with moderate sensorineural hearing loss.

A new method of training auditory-visual speech reception is described and evaluated on an experimental group of 12 hearing-impaired adult patients. The method involves simultaneous, live presentation of the visible and acoustic components of the therapist's speech, where the acoustic signal is degraded under the therapist's control with a voice-activated switch. Pre- and post-training performance was assessed with an auditory-visual sentence recognition task. The performance of the experimental group, who received 10 hours of individual training, is described and compared to a control group who received a traditional aural rehabilitation program and to a group of normals who received no training. The experimental training resulted in significantly greater improvement than the control group. A description of the training, including rationale and suggestions for implementation in a clinical setting, is provided.