Lipreading and audiovisual speech recognition across the adult lifespan: Implications for audiovisual integration.

Abstract

In this study of visual (V-only) and audiovisual (AV) speech recognition in adults aged 22-92 years, the rate of age-related decrease in V-only performance was more than twice that in AV performance. Both auditory-only (A-only) and V-only performance were significant predictors of AV speech recognition, but age did not account for additional (unique) variance. Blurring the visual speech signal decreased speech recognition, and in AV conditions involving stimuli associated with equivalent unimodal performance for each participant, speech recognition remained constant from 22 to 92 years of age. Finally, principal components analysis revealed separate visual and auditory factors, but no evidence of an AV integration factor. Taken together, these results suggest that the benefit that comes from being able to see as well as hear a talker remains constant throughout adulthood, and that changes in this AV advantage are entirely driven by age-related changes in unimodal visual and auditory speech recognition.

Face Viewing Behavior Predicts Multisensory Gain During Speech Perception

“…Another poorly understood axis of individual variability is the perceptual benefit provided by viewing a talker's face. While the large benefit of seeing the face in understanding noisy speech is incontrovertible (Grant et al 1998;Sumby and Pollack 1954; for a review see Peelle and Sommers 2015) there is no explanation in the literature for the high interindividual variability in this benefit that is observed across all published experiments (Grant et al, 1998;Sommers et al, 2005;Tye-Murray et al, 2016;Van Engen et al, 2014. Consistent with these reports, we observed large individual variability, with audiovisual gain ranging from 9 -68% across participants.…”

“…The mouth movements made by the talker provide an independent source of information about speech content that is especially useful under circumstances in which the auditory signal is degraded, as in a noisy room. While the ability of visual speech to enhance the intelligibility of noisy auditory speech is well documented (Grant et al 1998;Sumby and Pollack 1954; for a review see Peelle and Sommers 2015) published studies report high interindividual variability across all tested stimulus types, including consonants, words, meaningful sentences or anomalous sentences spoken in different speaking styles (Grant et al, 1998;Sommers, Tye-Murray, & Spehar, 2005;Van Engen, Phelps, Smiljanic, & Chandrasekaran, 2014;Van Engen, Xie, & Chandrasekaran, 2017); across all types of auditory noise, including multi-talker babble and speech-shaped noise (Sommers et al, 2005;Tye-Murray, Spehar, Myerson, Hale, & Sommers, 2016;Van Engen et al, 2014; and across all populations, including young and old adults (Sommers et al, 2005;Tye-Murray et al, 2016). In every study, some participants show a small benefit for visual speech while others show a large benefit.…”

Shifts in Audiovisual Processing in Healthy Aging

“…In one such study, younger and older adults completed a word-recognition task where target words were embedded in sentences presented in the visual, auditory, and audiovisual modalities [88]. The level of auditory noise was kept constant at each participant’s individually-measured SNR associated with 30% accuracy.…”

Audiovisual sentence recognition not predicted by susceptibility to the McGurk effect

“…Given the different stimulus materials, noise levels, and listener populations in the two studies, there are multiple possible explanations for the different outcomes. Differences in unimodal abilities across the participants in the two studies are a likely candidate: not only did the older adults in Grant and Seitz (1998) have hearing loss, but speechreading ability is also known to decline with age (Sommers et al, 2005; Tye-Murray et al, 2016). …”