People can understand words spoken at high ultrasonic ranges once thought to be far beyond the capacity of human hearing, scientists have found. The ultrasonic speech must be conducted by an awkward laboratory device that transmits it through the bones of the skull, but when delivered in this manner even those who are profoundly deaf can comprehend the words.

The findings raise the possibility that people may have a second, previously unknown acoustical organ that is distinct from the cochlea of the inner ear, which detects the sounds of everyday life. And they suggest a new approach for designing devices to help those who can hear little or nothing in normal audio ranges.

The results of the research were reported today in the journal Science. Deaf Respond to Sound

"Clearly there is a system that will respond to sound even in deaf people whose cochleas have been badly destroyed," Dr. Martin L. Lenhardt of the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond, the main author of the report, said Wednesday in an interview. "That suggests there is some compensatory mechanism at work."

But scientists do not know what kinds of deafness might be helped by the new approach.

Much remains to be done before any sort of hearing aid based on the new approach will be available, but the researchers hope eventually to have a little patch the size of a quarter that can be taped to the neck to translate normal speech into ultrasonic tones for those who are partly or wholly deaf. The research was financed in part by Hearing Innovations, a company in Tucson, Ariz., that holds patents on the method.