The effect of content of initial instructions on the speech discrimination scores of hearing and hearing-impaired children.

This paper investigated the effects of content of initial instructions on the speech discrimination abilities of 8 groups of children (4 groups of hearing children; 4 groups of hearing-impaired children--N = 10 children in each group). The speech discrimination abilities of the children in each group were ascertained with the AB monosyllabic word lists following two modes of initial instructions. It was concluded that with monosyllabic word lists scored phonemically it is essential to instruct each listener to repeat not meaningful whole words but also everything else that he/she recognises, including words which do not make sense, or parts of the words or even single sounds. Failure to highlight in the initial instructions the phonemic aspects of scoring brings about significantly lower speech discrimination scores.