Influence of visual analogue of speech envelope, formants, and word onsets on word recognition is not pronounced
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: • Visually presented speech features (envelope, formants, and word onsets) of the target speaker do not affect word recognition. • This is also not the case for speech features of the distractor speaker. • Hearing ability is not related to a possible benefit of the visually presented speech features of the target and the distractor speaker. In noisy environments, filtering out the relevant speech signal from the background noise is a major challenge. Visual cues, such as lip movements, can improve speech understanding. This suggests that lip movements carry information about speech features (e.g. speech envelope, formants, word onsets) that can be used to aid speech understanding. Moreover, the isolated visual or tactile presentation of the speech envelope can also aid word recognition. However, the evidence in this area is rather mixed, and formants and word onsets have not been studied in this context. This online study investigates the effect of different visually presented speech features (speech envelope, formants, word onsets) during a two-talker audio on word recognition. The speech features were presented as a circle whose size was modulated over time based on the dynamics of three speech features. The circle was either modulated according to the speech features of the target speaker, the distractor speaker or an unrelated control sentence. After each sentence, the participants` word recognition was tested by writing down what they heard. We show that word recognition is not enhanced for any of the visual features relative to the visual control condition.
Source: Hearing Research
Authors: Kaja Rosa Benz, Anne Hauswald, Nathan Weisz
Language: English
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $4,130
Award: G4986816469
OpenAlex ID: W4408168307