Comprehension of speeded speech – a comparative study of blind and sighted people 

The present study investigates comprehension of speeded speech by blind and sighted people. The material consists of synthesized sentences of different speeds (6–22 syl/sec). The recorded sentences were presented to 31 participants who were asked to repeat them. The design is an adaptive method taking into consideration the individual comprehension performance of each participant. The results indicate that blind people are able to understand much faster speech than sighted people. There are significant differences in comprehension of speeded speech between blind and sighted people starting at a syllable rate of 12 syl/sec. These results suggest an interplay between the training effect and neuronal factors which are in need of future research. Moreover, differences in comprehension performance of congenitally vs. noncongenitally blind participants were not significant.