From: IS30124@OTAGO.AC.NZ
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.deaf-l
Subject: Re: chance in speechreading
Date: 5 Nov 92 02:53:00 GMT
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Lew Golan says:-
>There's little or no chance involved. Given the situation, the results are
>fairly predictable. No chance is involved here, either. I don't have a prayer
>of a chance of getting a word he says.
>     In short:
>     Yes, my understanding can vary from 100% to 0%.
>     No, it usually isn't a matter of chance.

I do not mean to criticise anyone. I am all for getting facts clear and
increasing mutual understanding between deaf and hearing people.

There almost certainly exists patterns in lipreading success data. When I talk
about lipreading success, I mean understanding of whole sentences.

I realise that my research question was a bit inaccurate. I am not that
interested in how well oral-trained deaf people can lipread, although your
(Lew's) explanations make interesting reading (Thank you, Lew!). I am more
interested in what percentage of deaf people with losses over 80 decibals in
the better ear can lipread well enough to be reasonably assimilated into the
hearing world.

My hypothesis is that there are only 1 out of 10 profoundly deaf people who can
lipread. I read a magazine that said only 1 out of 10 deaf children in NZ
schools were considered successes by the oralist policy.

I realise that the oralism-sign language debate will never end, but it's my
opinion that, as long as people can communicate in a way that suits them, then
that's good.

As for someone's opinion that pursuing research findings is a negative thing, I
submit that the truth is important but also that it is important to give a
balance to what I am writing. I would avoid writing negative things that put
people off from further reading.

Perhaps a research method is to select a number of different groups of deaf
people. One group would be signers who were born deaf and not oral-trained.
Another group would be born-deaf people who were oral trained. Another would be
post-lingually deaf who were oral-trained, and so on... Inevitably, there will
be different variations for each group but methods exist to transform the data
so that variations are constant. Then an ANOVA could be performed to find out
if there are significant differences between the groups. The null hypothesis,
of course, is that there is no difference between the groups. A regression
analysis could be done, too. Also, Tukey's or Bonferroni's methods could be
used to find out if there are significant differences between the individual
groups. The model is of course a fixed effects one.

So, to use Lew Golan's argument that chance does not play a part in lipreading
success, I would think if there was just chance then the null hypothesis will
be true. The normal distribution assumption can be tested - that means the
individual groups will represent their populations at large, i.e. it cannot be
said that the subjects are just lackeys roped in from a drinking party ! :-) or
that the subjects are bald eagles and excited monkeys ! :-)

BTW, has anyone carried out this kind of experiment?

I think I did hear about research that found that hearing people made better
lipreaders than deaf people.

>     hirsuiteness of speaker's face
What's "hirsuitness" ? Is that how much hair there is on the speaker's
face? Wouldn't that be "hirsuteness" ?

Have a nice day, everyone :-)

Yours faithfully,
Barry Kirkland.
IS30124@OTAGO.AC.NZ
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU