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Gaze in Action: Head-mounted Eye Tracking of Children's Dynamic Visual Attention During Naturalistic Behavior
Published on: November 14, 2018
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The development of gaze to a speaking face
Julia Irwin1, Lawrence Brancazio2, Nicole Volpe2
1Haskins Laboratories, 300 George Street, New Haven, Connecticut 06511, USA.
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
|June 11, 2017
Summary
Children aged 5-10 increasingly look at a speaker's mouth, especially in noisy conditions. This developing visual attention to speech may explain why visual cues become more important for understanding speech as children grow older.
Area of Science:
- Developmental psychology
- Auditory perception
- Speech processing
Background:
- Visible speech influences auditory speech perception, even in clear listening conditions.
- The impact of visual speech cues on auditory comprehension increases during childhood.
- The underlying mechanisms for this developmental change in visual speech influence are not well understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the developmental changes in visual attention to a speaking face in children and adults.
- To determine if changes in gaze behavior correlate with the increasing influence of visual speech cues with age.
Main Methods:
- Examined gaze patterns of children (5-10 years) and adults viewing a speaking face.
- Utilized visual-only (speech reading), speech-in-noise, and audiovisual mismatch (McGurk effect) conditions.
- Measured participants' looking behavior, specifically focusing on facial fixation points.
Main Results:
- Gaze directed towards the speaker's face, particularly the mouth, significantly increased in children aged 5-10 across all tested conditions.
- This developmental increase in facial looking was observed in visual-only, noisy, and audiovisual mismatch scenarios.
Conclusions:
- Age-related changes in visual attention to the speaker's mouth are a likely mechanism explaining the enhanced influence of visual speech cues in older children.
- The findings highlight the dynamic interplay between visual attention and auditory speech processing during development.
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