Objectives
Speechreading (lip-reading) is used by us all, but it is particularly important for people with impaired hearing. Speechreading skills can be trained, and valid and reliable tests are needed for speechreading skills assessment. The aim of this project was to develop a speechreading test for primary school age children acquiring Finnish. In addition, a freeware application is being constructed for speechreading training.
Method
The test (Huttunen & Saalasti, 2023) includes four alternative choices for each stimulus word or sentence. After presenting each video stimulus, the choices are presented in written form and as colourful drawings. Twelve 8- to 11-year-old children named the illustrations when exploring how well children would interpret them (identify targets illustrated). Two practice items and 128 pilot test items (1-to-3-syllable nouns and verbs) were first constructed for the word-level part of the test. For each item, two to four alternative choices differed from each other by only one phoneme, e.g., pullo (bottle)–pallo (ball). Sentence-level pilot items (n = 60) each contained two to three words. Both articulation place of consonants and articulation manner of vowels were carefully taken into consideration; visemes (visually similar phonemes) in different alternatives most often represented different viseme categories. During the pilot phase with 57 hearing children aged 8 to 11 years, construct validity of the test was also examined by using a task with open-set 2-to-3-word everyday sentences.
Optic Track training application consisting of single words, sentences, and brief stories is currently under construction. Gamification (memory games, bingo games, sentence construction tasks) and a reward system based on point-earning are embedded in the application to motivate children to keep on training.
Results
The final set of speechreading test items (20 words and 10 sentences) was selected e.g., by using discrimination scores of the pilot participants. Both item and scale analysis and examining of the internal consistency of the test lists were used for that.
Conclusion
The carefully constructed test will be used in assessing speechreading performance in research and in clinical work. With the application it is possible to practice independently and train skills during speech and language therapy sessions.

**Objectives**
Speechreading (lip-reading) is used by us all, but it is particularly important for people with impaired hearing. Speechreading skills can be trained, and valid and reliable tests are needed for speechreading skills assessment. The aim of this project was to develop a speechreading test for primary school age children acquiring Finnish. In addition, a freeware application is being constructed for speechreading training.
**Method**
The test (Huttunen & Saalasti, 2023) includes four alternative choices for each stimulus word or sentence. After presenting each video stimulus, the choices are presented in written form and as colourful drawings. Twelve 8- to 11-year-old children named the illustrations when exploring how well children would interpret them (identify targets illustrated). Two practice items and 128 pilot test items (1-to-3-syllable nouns and verbs) were first constructed for the word-level part of the test. For each item, two to four alternative choices differed from each other by only one phoneme, e.g., _pullo_ (bottle)–_pallo_ (ball). Sentence-level pilot items (n = 60) each contained two to three words. Both articulation place of consonants and articulation manner of vowels were carefully taken into consideration; visemes (visually similar phonemes) in different alternatives most often represented different viseme categories. During the pilot phase with 57 hearing children aged 8 to 11 years, construct validity of the test was also examined by using a task with open-set 2-to-3-word everyday sentences.
_Optic Track_ training application consisting of single words, sentences, and brief stories is currently under construction. Gamification (memory games, bingo games, sentence construction tasks) and a reward system based on point-earning are embedded in the application to motivate children to keep on training.
**Results**
The final set of speechreading test items (20 words and 10 sentences) was selected e.g., by using discrimination scores of the pilot participants. Both item and scale analysis and examining of the internal consistency of the test lists were used for that.
**Conclusion**
The carefully constructed test will be used in assessing speechreading performance in research and in clinical work. With the application it is possible to practice independently and train skills during speech and language therapy sessions.

Construction of a new speechreading test and training application for children acquiring Finnish

It is with great pleasure and enthusiasm, that on behalf of the Cochlear Implant centers of the Radboud UMC in Nijmegen and Erasmus MC Sophia Children’s Hospital in Rotterdam to invite you to attend the 16th European Symposium on Pediatric Cochlear Implantation to Rotterdam, the Netherlands in 2023.

Yours sincerely, on behalf of the CI Centers at Radboud UMC and Erasmus MC,