The development and analysis of interactive videodisc technology to teach speechreading.

Members of the Department of Communication Disorders and Special Education and the Institute for Interactive Technologies at Bloomsburg University developed a computer-based interactive videodisc instructional program to teach speechreading skills. Speechreading Challenges on Videodisc provides users with practice in speechreading words, sentences, and stories presented by over 150 people in a user friendly environment. Unlike traditional videotapes, videodisc technology provides immediate feedback to the user. To determine the program's effectiveness in teaching speechreading, a comprehensive evaluation of the program was undertaken. Seventy-four college students participated in a study using the program to learn speechreading. Results indicated a statistically significant improvement in speechreading ability from pretest to posttest measures on both the videodisc program evaluation as well as on the Costello Test of Speechreading.

Response feedback, certitude and learning from text.

Based upon the premise that persons modify their study behaviours in order to maintain their certainty of responding correctly, a study was conducted with 40 undergraduate volunteers examining the effects of different presentation rates and feedback context on response confidence and correct responding. Significant effects in the anticipated direction were found for presentation rate but not for the context of feedback.