The Effect of Time Distortions on the Intelligibility of Deaf Children's Speech

Abnormal time relationships in the speech of deaf children are discussed. An experiment, the aim of which was to examine the effect of teaching directed solely at improving the time factors in the speech of a group of severely deaf children, is described. This teaching produced a 56% improvement in word intelligibility and an even greater improvement in listeners' abilities to recognize the complete syntactic patterns of the children's utterances. It is concluded that the information about linguistic sequences which is carried by the relative time factors in speech becomes critical in the interpretation of speech which is grossly defective in its articulation. It is suggested that in teaching speech to deaf children great emphasis should be given to non-articulatory aspects in the improvement of which there are quick returns for effort.