Children perceive speech onsets by ear and eye

Area of Science:

• Developmental psychology
• Auditory perception
• Speech processing

Background:

• Adults utilize visual speech cues to interpret unclear auditory information.
• Children's sensitivity to visual speech appears to decrease from kindergarten to adolescence.
• This developmental pattern may stem from cognitive load rather than inherent sensitivity limitations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate children's sensitivity to visual speech.
• To determine if visual speech aids in perceiving low-fidelity auditory speech in children.
• To explore the developmental trajectory of audiovisual speech perception.

Main Methods:

• Phonological priming was used to assess sensitivity to visual speech.
• Low-fidelity auditory speech was presented in audiovisual (dynamic face) and auditory-only (still face) conditions.
• Participants ranged from four to fourteen years of age.

Main Results:

• Audiovisual presentation yielded greater phonological priming compared to auditory-only presentation across all child age groups.
• Visual speech effectively compensated for non-intact auditory speech onsets.
• The impact of visual speech was specific to phonological processing and speechreading abilities.

Conclusions:

• Children, like adults, perceive speech onsets multimodally, integrating visual and auditory information.
• Visual speech plays a crucial role in speech perception development, even with incomplete auditory input.
• These findings necessitate the inclusion of visual speech in developmental theories of speech perception.