DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION OF A TACTILATORY SYSTEM

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Tactiling is the name given to a method of tactually supplementing speechreading. According to this method a deaf speechreader places his hand on a talker's shoulder with his fingers lightly against the neck thus obtaining clues relating to consonant production. The method was invented by a postlingually deafened Swedish male, Gustaf Soderlund, and has been studied since 1986 by several investigators including one of the applicants for this grant (Plant). Mr. Soderlund's performance is outstanding and the method has been found to be effective on 24 postlingually deafened subjects even without training (Ohngren 1992). An experimental device called a "Tactilator" was built and tested by Ohngren and it was shown that by using a contact microphone on the neck, in place of direct hand contact, that similar information could be transmitted. During the Phase I study we were able to show that an air microphone with certain processing procedures could give results similar to the contact microphone, but that Mr. Soderlund still preferred the contact microphone. In this Phase II work we will investigate the processing methods further, both on Mr. Soderlund and on a larger population, and field evaluate the best of the tactilator processing methods with the view of designing a commercial unit. PROPOSED COMMERCIAL APPLICATION: The commercial production of this device is assured. It would be a low cost device for aiding the postlingually deaf in speechreading. The key issue is that its low cost and convenience would increase the market size in as much as all present devices are quite expensive and probably do not offer greater advantage for this population.