   , 2003, . 17, . 3, 199–216 Speech habilitation of hard of hearing adolescents using electropalatography and ultrasound as evaluated by trained listeners BARBARA BERNHARDT†, BRYAN GICK‡, PENELOPE BACSFALVI† and JULIE ASHDOWN§ †School of Audiology and Speech Sciences, University of British Columbia, Canada ‡Department of Linguistics, University of British Columbia, Canada §Ministry of Health, British Columbia, Canada ( Received 30 October 2002; accepted 20 November 2002 ) Abstract Four adolescents with moderate to severe sensorineural hearing losses and moder- ately unintelligible speech participated in a 14-week speech therapy study using two dynamic visual feedback technologies, electropalatography and ultrasound imaging. Electropalatography provides information about tongue-hard palate contact points. Ultrasound displays images of tongue shape and movement in two dimensions from the tip to the root. Treatment targets for all participants included a sibilant place contrast (/s/ versus /s/), liquids /l/ and /r/, and the tense-lax vowel contrast with the high vowels. Trained listener evaluations of pre- and post-treatment transcripts are reported in this paper. Significant improvements in speech production were noted across students and targets. Treatment targets improved significantly more than non-treatment test targets overall. Students showed greatest gains on conson- ants that were absent or marginal in their speech pre-treatment. No particular advantage of one technology over the other was evident in this sample. Keywords: Electropalatography, ultrasound, hearing impaired. Introduction Advances in articulatory visual feedback technology have provided new opportunit- ies for treatment of speech disorders. In the present study, four adolescents with hearing and speech impairments participated in speech therapy utilizing two dynamic visual feedback systems, electropalatography and two-dimensional ultrasound imaging. Results of the study are presented in terms of trained listener transcriptions of pre- and post-treatment single-word data. The following introduction describes Address correspondence to: Barbara Bernhardt, 5804 Fairview Avenue, Vancouver BC Canada, V6T 1Z3. e-mail bb@audiospeech.ubc.ca Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics ISSN 0269-9206 print/ISSN 1464-5076 online © 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/0269920031000071451