Acquisition of a tactile-alone vocabulary by normally hearing users of theTickle Talker (TM)

Tactile-alone word recognition training was provided to six normally hearin g users of the Tickle Talker(TM), an electrotactile speech perception devic e. A mean group tactile-alone vocabulary of 31 words was learned in 12 h of training. These results were comparable to, or superior to, these reported for other tactile devices and Tadoma, With increased training the group be came faster at learning tactually new words, which were introduced in small training sets. However, as their tactile-alone vocabulary grew, subjects r equired more training time to reach the pass criterion when evaluated on th eir recognition of their whole vocabulary list. A maximum possible vocabula ry size was not established. The application of tactile-alone training with hearing-impaired users of the device is discussed. (C) 1999 Acoustical Soc iety of America. [S0001-4966(99)01108-X].