Lipreading with tactile supplements

Lipreading performance, after brief training, was measured in two normal subjects, as the percentage of words recognized in sets of unrelated sentences. Three receptive conditions were used: lipreading alone, lipreading plus a single-channel tactile display of fundamental frequency (temporal only), and lipreading plus a multichannel, tactile, spatial display of fundamental frequency (temporal-spatial). After training, performance with tactile supplements was better than without, but it was not possible to conclude that either of the tactile displays was better than the other. During training, a significant correlation between performance and session number was found for the temporal-spatial display only.