by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.
One lady asked,
I was wondering if it is possible to speech read what people are saying if you can’t hear them at all? I am finding that if I can hear them even a little bit, I can speech read a lot of what they are saying. but if I can’t hear them at all, I have a real hard time making out words. Does this make sense?
You are right on target. You can often speechread short remarks quite well without hearing a sound, but for longer conversations even a bit of hearing makes understanding ever so much easier.
For example, studies have shown that by using residual hearing alone, or speechreading alone, you might get about 20-30% of the conversation, but when using both your residual hearing and speechreading at the same time, you can expect to get 80% or even more. This is my experience also.
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