SKILLED SPEECHREADING - A SINGLE-CASE STUDY

In a case study the cognitive characteristics of a skilled visual spee chreader (SJ) was examined and compared to a control group. SJ is a 56 year old woman, skilled in visual speechreading. She differs from mos t of the 119 individuals in the control group, as she uses a particula r speechreading strategy in which she attempts to repeat overtly each spoken word as soon as it has been uttered, and to summarize and fill in missing pieces of information whenever it is possible (e.g., during pauses) during the conversation. SJ outperformed the control group on three types of tasks; a reading span task, performance in the asympto te level in the serial position curve, and verbal inference-making. SJ 's results were discussed with respect to (a) how they relate to the g eneral case (i.e., models based on group-data) and to (b) her speechre ading strategy. From a clinical perspective it was suggested that it m ight be possible to practice the strategy as such, but any possible im provement is dependent on the individual's capability to process infor mation in this way.