Cortical networks underlying audio‐visual speech perception in normal‐hearing and hearing impaired individuals

Hearing-impaired persons usually perceive speech by watching the face of the talker while listening through a hearing aid. Normal-hearing persons also tend to rely on visual cues, especially when they communicate in noisy or reverberant environments. Numerous clinical and laboratory studies on the auditory-visual performance of normal-hearing and hearing-impaired children and adults demonstrate that combined auditory-visual perception is superior to perception through either audition or vision alone. This paper reviews these studies and provides a rationale for routine evaluation of auditory-visual speech perception in audiology clinics.

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Auditory-Visual Speech Perception and Auditory-Visual Enhancement in Normal-Hearing Younger and Older Adults

Ear and Hearing ◽

10.1097/00003446-200506000-00003 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 26 (3) ◽

pp. 263-275 ◽

Cited By ~ 116

Author(s):

Mitchell S. Sommers ◽

Nancy Tye-Murray ◽

Brent Spehar

Keyword(s):

Older Adults ◽

Speech Perception ◽

Normal Hearing ◽

Visual Speech ◽

Visual Enhancement ◽

Visual Speech Perception

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Attention to Facial Regions in Segmental and Prosodic Visual Speech Perception Tasks

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research ◽

10.1044/jslhr.4203.526 ◽

1999 ◽

Vol 42 (3) ◽

pp. 526-539 ◽

Cited By ~ 56

Author(s):

Charissa R. Lansing ◽

George W. McConkie

Keyword(s):

Speech Perception ◽

Visual Information ◽

Eye Gaze ◽

Normal Hearing ◽

Visual Speech ◽

Gaze Direction ◽

The Gaze ◽

The Face ◽

Visual Speech Perception ◽

Prosodic Categories

Two experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis that visual information related to segmental versus prosodic aspects of speech is distributed differently on the face of the talker. In the first experiment, eye gaze was monitored for 12 observers with normal hearing. Participants made decisions about segmental and prosodic categories for utterances presented without sound. The first experiment found that observers spend more time looking at and direct more gazes toward the upper part of the talker's face in making decisions about intonation patterns than about the words being spoken. The second experiment tested the Gaze Direction Assumption underlying Experiment 1—that is, that people direct their gaze to the stimulus region containing information required for their task. In this experiment, 18 observers with normal hearing made decisions about segmental and prosodic categories under conditions in which face motion was restricted to selected areas of the face. The results indicate that information in the upper part of the talker's face is more critical for intonation pattern decisions than for decisions about word segments or primary sentence stress, thus supporting the Gaze Direction Assumption. Visual speech perception proficiency requires learning where to direct visual attention for cues related to different aspects of speech.

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