청각장애아동의 말명료도에 영향을 미치는 화자 요인

The Relationship Between Speech Intelligibility and Related Factors of Speakers in Prelingually Hearing Impaired Children Using Hearing Aids

본 연구는 청각장애 아동의 말명료도에 영향을 주는 화자 변인(생활연령, 청각장애의 진단시기, 언어능력, 조음능력, 청력손실의 정도, 교육기간)들과 말명료도의 관계를 살펴보고, 이들 중 말명료도에 가장 큰 영향을 주는 변인을 찾아보는 것을 목적으로 하였다. 연구의 대상은 5세에서 10세 사이의 중고도(70 dB 이상) 청각장애 아동 20명으로, 이들에게 낱말명료도검사를 실시하여 말명료도를 측정하였다. 연구결과 생활연령, 조음능력, 언어능력, 청력손실의 정도가 말명료도와 상관관계가 높게 나타났으며, 그 중 자음정확도로 측정한 조음능력이 말명료도에 가장 큰 영향을 주는 것으로 나타났다. 이러한 결과에 대해 청각장애 아동의 말명료도에 영향을 주는 요인들에 관련하여 논의하였다.

This study aimed to evaluate the relationship between the speech intelligibility and related factor s of speaker in hearing impaired children using hearing aids. For the purpose of the study, the following 6 factor s were selected as the related factor s of speaker based on the previou s studies : (1) chronological ages, (2) the fir st diagnostic date of hearing los s, (3) language ability , (4) articulation ability , (5) the degree of hearing los s, and (6) duration of education . T he subject s were 20 prelingually hearing impaired children between the ages of 5 and 10 who have been using oral communication mode everyday . T heir hearing losses ranged from 70 dB to 130 dB in better ear . Speech intelligibility , articulation ability and language ability were measured by u sing word intelligibility test , PCC (Percent of Con sonant Correct ) and two test s (reception : Korean Peabody Picture Vocabulary T est ; expres sion : Korean Boston Naming T est ), respectively . T he result s of the study were as follows : (1) the speech intelligibility had a strong positive correlation with three related factor s of speaker s : the articulation ability (r = .87), the receptive language ability ( r = .66), the expres sive language ability factor (r = .62); (2) the speech intelligibility had a negative correlation with the degrees of hearing loss (r = - .51) at the level of .01; and (3) the articulation ability alone explained the 76 % of speech intelligibility . T hese result s suggest that the articulation ability factor appeared to be most influential among the 6 related factor s of the speaker , which affect s the speech intelligibility of prelingually hearing impaired children with hearing aids on . From the clinical per spective, the result s also suggest that the treatment focused on improving the articulation ability could help to enhance verbal communication ability of hearing impaired children .