Auditory detection of spondaic words in wide-band noise was measured both for normal-hearing adults and for profoundly deaf children. For the normals, a close relation was found between the speech-to-noise (S/N) ratio required to raise detection for speech above the 50% (i.e. chance) level and the S/N ratio necessary to improve lipreading of similar materials (data from a previous study). This result suggested that the mere detection of speech patterns may provide sufficient information to supplement lipreading. The deaf subjects required about 9 dB greater S/N ratio for 75% correct detection of words than did those with normal hearing. Subjects with moderate-to-severe hearing losses required intermediate S/N values. This finding implied that maximum communication effectiveness may occur for hearing-impaired children only at higher S/N ratios than that required by normal-hearing persons. Supplementary data indicated a similarity between the S/N ratios required for detection by the ears of profoundly deaf children and by the hands of normal-hearing adults. A monaurally deaf adult subject reported introspectively that she perceived the acoustic stimuli through her deaf ear as vibratory in nature.
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Norman P. Erber (1971) studied this question.