DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION OF A TACTILATOR 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 voicing and dynamic speech intensity. The method was invented by a postlingually deaf Swedish male and has been studied since 1986 by several investigators including one of the applicants for this grant (Plant and Spens 1986). The original user's performance is outstanding and the method has found to be effective on 24 postlingually deaf subjects even without training (Ohngren 1992). An experimental device called a Tactilator has been built (Ohngren 1992) which allows an individual to obtain similar information without coming into direct physical contact with the talker by replacing the direct hand- neck contact with a contact microphone, an appropriate amplifying system and a bone receiver which is hand-held by the deaf speechreader. The purpose of this study is to refine this experimental design, ideally replacing the contact microphone with a more convenient noise canceling microphone plus suitable processing circuits, and to study the technique's utility, both as an inexpensive aid-to speechreading and as an adjunct to other tactual and implant methods. The major goals in the Phase l studs are to develop an inexpensive prototype based on an existing product, to design and implement effective evaluation methods and to begin studies of performance using several variations of the Tactiling method.