The study investigated the initial effects of the implementation of vi
brotactile support on the individual's speech perception ability. Thir
ty-two subjects participated in the study; 16 with an acquired deafnes
s and 16 with normal hearing. At a general level, the results indicate
d no immediate and direct improvement as a function of the implementat
ion across all speech perception tests. However, when the subjects wer
e divided into Skilled and Less Skilled groups, based on their perform
ance in the visual condition of each test, it was found that the perfo
rmance of the Skilled subjects deteriorated while that of the Less Ski
lled subjects improved when tactile information was provided in two co
nditions (word-discrimination and word-decoding conditions). It was co
ncluded that tactile information interferes with Skilled subjects' aut
omaticity of these functions. Furthermore, intercorrelations between d
iscrimination and decoding tasks suggest that there are similarities b
etween visually and tactilely supported speechreading in how they rela
te to sentence-based speechreading. Clinical implications of the resul
ts were discussed.