The effects of age and gender on lipreading abilities

Age-related declines for many sensory and cognitive abilities are greater for males than for females. The primary purpose of the present investigation was to consider whether age-related changes in lipreading abilities are similar for men and women by comparing the lipreading abilities of separate groups of younger and older adults. Older females, older males, younger females and younger males completed vision-only speech recognition tests of: (1) 13 consonants in a vocalic /i/-C-/i/ environment; (2) words in a carrier phrase; and (3) meaningful sentences. In addition to percent correct performance, consonant data were analyzed for performance within viseme categories. The results suggest that while older adults do not lipread as well as younger adults, the difference between older and younger participants was comparable across gender. We also found no differences in the lipreading abilities of males and females, regardless of stimulus type (i.e., consonants, words, sentences), a finding that differs from some reports by previous investigators (e.g., Dancer, Krain, Thompson, Davis, & Glenn, 1994).