A CROSS-SECTIONAL INVESTIGATION OF SPEECHREADING IN ADULTS - EFFECTS OF AGE, GENDER, PRACTICE, AND EDUCATION

The speechreading performance of 50 adults ranging in age from 20-69 w ith normal hearing and vision was determined using lists A and B of Ha rris' Revised CID Everyday Sentence Lists. Statistical analysis of the four variables of age, gender, practice, and education revealed that females showed significantly higher speechreading scores than did male s. Further, females improved their performance significantly over the two trials while males did not. Females in their 30s showed the highes t performance levels while males in their 60s showed the lowest. Years of education had no effect on scores. A number of factors, including caution, visual-neural conduction times, presbyopic changes in vision, and left-right hemispheric function, may help to explain the present findings, which have implications for both clinicians and researchers.