Facial hair as a factor in speechreading performance.

Eleven hearing-impaired subjects were tested using a speechreading test employing the CID Everyday Sentence Lists read by a male speaker under four different conditions: full beard and moustache, trimmed beard and moustache, moustache only, and clean shaven. The results indicated that varying amounts of facial hair do not have significant effects on speechreading performance. Mean scores for speechreading performance decreased somewhat with reduction of facial hair, however, as confirmed by a test of linear trend (p less than 0.05).