Tactile perception by the profoundly deaf. Speech and environmental sounds.

Four subjects fitted with single-channel vibrotactile aids and provided with training in their use took part in a testing programme aimed at assessing their aided and unaided lipreading performance, their ability to detect segmental and suprasegmental features of speech, and the discrimination of common environmental sounds. The results showed that the vibrotactile aid provided very useful information as to speech and non-speech stimuli with the subjects performing best on those tasks where time/intensity cues provided sufficient information to enable identification. The implications of the study are discussed and a comparison made with those results reported for subjects using cochlear implants.