Cognition as a bridge between signal and dialogue: Communication in the hearing impaired and deaf

This paper is an overview of the research we have carried out at Linkoping University on cognitive aspects of visual language processing and related c ommunicative forms. In the first section, a cognitive individual difference perspective on speechreading is introduced. In the second, compensatory pe rceptual mechanisms are discussed on the basis of behavioral and neurophysi ological data. The third section addresses further the issue of perceptual versus cognitive compensation, and the fourth and fifth sections apply a se t of cognitive tests based on the concept of working memory for poorly spec ified language input to data on the successes and failures with cochlear im plants, tactile aids and hearing aids.