Primary Modality for Speech Perception in Children with Normal and Impaired Hearing

Abstract

The relationships between each of seven predictor variables and the relative degree to which 84 normal and hearing-impaired children used audition or vision in their perception of word stimuli were investigated. The children's relative use of audition or vision was assessed by the auditory-visual presentation of monosyllabic word stimuli in which the visual word stimuli were in conflict with those presented acoustically. Six of the seven predictor variables were significantly correlated with the performance scores obtained within the auditory-visual conflict condition. Only pure-tone average hearing level and auditory word identification performance, however, made unique contributions toward predicting the degree to which audition or vision was used in the perception of the word stimuli. We concluded that the relative use of audition or vision was almost completely related to their auditory capabilities as represented by the children's unaided threshold sensitivity and aided speech reception performance.

Children use visual speech to compensate for non-intact auditory speech

“…The relatively greater sensitivity to visual speech of our task may be reflecting previous findings indicating that a compatible AV utterance is more likely to be viewed as a single multisensory event and more likely to be synthesized and thus processed in an interdependent manner (Tomiak et al, 1987; Vatakis & Spence, 2007). The current outcome is also consistent with the research reporting that children’s relative weighting of auditory and visual inputs depends on the quality of the input-with speech perception for intact auditory input such as McGurk stimuli more auditory bound (e.g., Huyse et al, 2013; Seewald et al, 1985; Sekiyama & Burnham, 2008). Importantly Study 2 also documented that sensitivity to visual speech varies in the same childr en depending on the task/stimulus demands.…”

“…For examples, children with n orm al hearing, listening to McGurk stimuli with lower fidelity (spectrally reduced) auditory speech, respond more on the basis of the intact visual input (Huyse, Berthommier, & Leybaert, 2013); but when the visual input is also artificially degraded, the children shift and respond more on the basis of the lower fidelity auditory input. Children with normal hearing or mild-moderate hearing loss and good auditory word recognition-listening to conflicting auditory and visual inputs such as auditory /meat/ coupled with visual /street/-respond on the basis of the auditory input (Seewald, Ross, Giolas, & Yonovitz, 1985). In contrast, children whose hearing loss is more severe-and whose perceived auditory input is more degraded-respond more on the basis of the visual input.…”

A reanalysis of McGurk data suggests that audiovisual fusion in speech perception is subject-dependent

“…It was, for example, the focus of a paper by Seewald et al ͑1985͒, suggesting that there was a "primary modality for speech perception," either auditory or visual. This hypothesis has received less attention since the work by Massaro and colleagues in the framework of the development of the "fuzzy-logical model of perception" ͑FLMP͒.…”

Audiovisual spoken word recognition by children with cochlear implants

“…One factor that appears to influence auditory-visual, or audiovisual integration is degree of hearing loss. Individuals with lesser degrees of hearing loss obtain better auditory-only and audiovisual performance than individuals with greater degrees of hearing loss (12). The nature of a listener's early linguistic experience also influences audiovisual speech perception.…”