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Eye Movements During Visual Speech Perception in Deaf and Hearing Children
Elizabeth Worster1, Hannah Pimperton1, Amelia Ralph-Lewis2
1Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience University College London.
Language Learning
|June 26, 2018
Summary
Deaf and hearing children who focus on the mouth while someone speaks and look at the eyes when they pause, demonstrating social-tuning, achieve better lipreading (speechreading) skills. This visual attention strategy is key for spoken language access.
Area of Science:
- Developmental psychology
- Audiology
- Linguistics
Background:
- Lipreading (speechreading) is crucial for spoken language access in deaf children.
- Understanding visual attention strategies in children is key to improving speechreading.
- Few studies have investigated the specific visual behaviors of deaf and hearing children during speechreading tasks.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the visual attention strategies of deaf and hearing children during a sentence speechreading task.
- To determine the relationship between visual attention patterns and speechreading accuracy.
- To explore the role of social-tuning and conversational turn-taking in speechreading performance.
Main Methods:
- Utilized eye tracking technology to monitor visual attention in 33 deaf and 59 hearing children aged 5-8 years.
- Assessed speechreading performance during a sentence-based task.
- Analyzed the proportion of time spent looking at the mouth versus other facial features during speech.
Main Results:
- A higher proportion of time spent looking at the mouth during speech directly correlated with improved speechreading accuracy.
- All children exhibited a pattern of watching the mouth during speech and the eyes during pauses (social-tuning).
- Social-tuning positively predicted speechreading performance, with a stronger effect observed in deaf children compared to hearing children.
Conclusions:
- Effective speechreading skills in children are associated with the ability to direct visual attention to relevant facial cues (mouth during speech, eyes during pauses).
- Social-tuning, a pattern of adaptive visual attention, is a significant predictor of speechreading success for both deaf and hearing children.
- Proficiency in understanding conversational turn-taking enhances speechreading abilities, highlighting the interplay between visual attention and pragmatic language skills.
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