Effects of speechreading and signal-to-noise ratio on understanding mainstream American English by American and Indian adults.

Abstract

DEDICATIONTo my parents, Ungan and Saeko Kanekama v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS There were many dark nights that I cried for…. and there were many bright days that I smiled for…. The writing of a dissertation can be a lonely and isolating experience, however, it is clearly not possible without the mental and physical support of my family, my American family, the faculty and staff of the CSD Department, the members of my committee, and my fellow doctoral students. poorer SNRs than at favorable SNRs. The novel finding of this study, however, was that Indian participants benefitted less from speechreading than American participants at poorer SNRs, but benefitted more from speechreading than American participants at favorable SNRs. Linguistic (and, possibly, nonlinguistic) variables may have accounted for these findings; including an increased need for Indian participants to integrate more auditory cues with visual cues to benefit from speechreading, presumably because they only spoke English as a second language. These findings have theoretical implications for understanding the role of auditory-visual integration on cross-language perception of speech, and practical implications for understanding how much speechreading helps people understand a second language in noisy environments.

The Bilingual Language Interaction Network for Comprehension of Speech

“…The addition of corroborative visual input (e.g., visual information for /b/ during noisy presentation of bill ) reduces the noise by making the phonological vector more like its originally-intended target. This process is especially important for bilingual speakers, as evidence suggests that bilinguals may rely more on this sort of multisensory integration than monolinguals (Kanekama & Downs, 2009; Marian, 2009; Navarra & Soto-Faraco, 2007).

Figure 10.Activation of the words bill and dill in the BLINCS model.

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