Acquisition of Lipreading in a Deaf Multihandicapped Child

Abstract

Operant techniques were used to develop lipreading in a nine-year-old deaf boy who had failed to respond appropriately to previous speechreading training. Remediation was initiated with two experiments: the first entailed a reversal and the second a multiple baseline. A component analysis revealed that both tokens and social reinforcers presented simultaneously or separately were effective in shaping lipreading. In addition, the child learned to lip-read either voiced or nonvoiced names of objects.