Speech Deteriorating as Hearing Declines?
Monday November 17, 2008
Recently I chatted with a hearing person whose hard of hearing sister is gradually losing her hearing. She commented that her sister's speech seems to be deteriorating as she loses more hearing. The sister's sounds are becoming "fuzzy" or "slurry."
I know that it is common for deaf people who grew up deaf to develop what we call "deaf speech," but this is the first time I have heard of someone who had good speech, having their speech become worse as their hearing gets worse. Can a hearing person develop "deaf speech?" I thought that people who knew how to talk properly retained that skill even if they lost their hearing.
Comments
Hi Jamie I am hearing, my partner is CODA. Yes a hearing person’s speech can develop the same kind of “accent” or flat affect or slightly off pronunciation as their hearing loss progresses, because they are no longer getting auditory feedback of how their speech sounds.
Jamie:
Yes, this is fairly common. Myself, I gre up severely HOH, with good speech, and as I grew older and lost the rest of my hearing, I found this occurring as well. I have found that I must work even harder in those situations where I can not sign, to control the modulations in my voice, etc.
Sign language is a danger to your speech, all acquired deaf people know this. The problem is lack of speech therapy and oral support when they go deaf, so they are forced into a scenario where silence and non-speech is the norm, thus it gets worse. It’s why I want exclusive sign language classes in the UK dropped in favour of inclusive communication means…
MM, I beg to differ.
It is not sign language, but the loss of hearing that gives one a tendency to fuzziness in speech, so many late-deafened people do benefit from speech therapy.
Use of sign language makes no difference at all in speech quality.
Such misconceptions as “sign language causing deterioration in speech” have to be corrected as they come up.
The facts say different. signing deaf have no interest in speech so the environment where sign is most used is non-conducive, either to speech recognition or its usage.
All this contributes to speech deterioration. As ever the maxim is this regarding speech or anything else, use it, or lose it. Loss of speech is NOT inevitable, I haven’t lost mine yet and been deaf near 40 years.
Deaf people born that way have learnt to speak too, that is because it is NOT inevitable… or par for the course, you do need adequate support for that to halt any speech decline, which is as much a sign (!) of isolation as much as exclusive sign usage.
It’s not a a sign rant, just statingthe situation sio cmpletely different for those from a hearingand sopeakingbackground,the system of their support is all wrong,they shouldn’t be reliant on sign language, but helpd with what they were familiar with, UK classes don’t do this, there is no ‘total communication’ approach for an adult, often nothing at all..
It can be common for people who lose their hearing to also have their articulation skills worsen. As a couple of people said already, it’s because of the lack of auditory feedback (that hearing people use without thinking). I’m a certified interpreter, and a speech pathologist…so from those hats let me just clarify that it is NOT sign language that has any impact on speech for these adults!
MM:
I beg to differ, sign language itself is not a detriment to speech. You may have a valid point regarding growing up in an environment that doesn’t value speech or see it as a necessity, but sign language ITSELF is not the problem.
As with any skill or talent, if speech is not used constantly, it WILL deterioriate. Now, that is different from saying that, as you grow older, your speech takes on an atonal or monotonal “accent”, which is viewed as “flat”. I suspect you may be like me, you may prefer to speak first, and sign if necessary, which is why you would still have excellent speech (as do I, but I have had people comment that my accent sounds different now).
I see the point you are trying to make, but felt I had to point out that sign language by itself is not the problem.
MM: If signing destroys speech, then why do so many of my signing friends still have excellent speech skills?
Since we hear we speak.As the hearing loss occurs , we do not hear ourselves and though we may have perfect speech with timewe would develop bad speech.As we hear, we keep correcting ourselves when we say something wrong.A small baby too babbles and develops speech due to hearing his own voice.
I am only slightly hard-of-hearing. When my right ear “acts up” my hearing gets worse and so does my speech. People are then commonly asking me to repeat things.
I am a beginner at sign language. The speech / hearing problem connection came before I could sign at all.
It is a lie that any form of sign language is detrimental to speech. This is a lie that has been repeated for hundreds of years. The truth is that the ability to hear is what governs the quality of one’s voice. Thus, it makes sense that one’s speech would deteriorate as one’s hearing declines. A common example is the inappropriately loud elderly person; unable to sense their voice at normal levels of speech, they distord it to an extremely loud, amplified version, and in some cases are barely recognizable.
It is the signing ENVIRONMENT that is non-conducive to speech maintenance. I fear the knee-jerk reactions via sign itself show a lack of communication understanding. An area that prides itself on a visual language and communication is not going to promote effective speech, or help maintain it.
Many deaf sites are dismissive of speech via ‘oralism’ yet these are two very different issues, and of course this represents more than two very distinct deaf areas too. My issue is volume not tone, we live in a very noisy world, and ‘normal’ speech volume I use, cannot be heard above ‘Muzak’ and other noises, I have no way of determining how far I need to raise my voice.
I could end up shouting all the time, and get problems with that. I still do not believe acquired deaf people should commit to the sign thing or the deaf world, but should have an alternative that builds on their experience and not try to adapt to someone-else’s.
I think it would lessen conflict to. We would not enter the deaf world, and then try to adapt it to us…. this is what is happening now, via CI/digital aid users, and acquired deaf.