Some profoundly hearing-impaired (HI) speechreaders (lipreaders) achieve levels of accuracy with connected speech that are greater than 80% words correct. These levels of performance are remarkable given that the existing speechreading literature characterizes the visual phonetic stimulus as highly ambiguous and the speechreader's lexicon as mostly filled with homophenous (i.e., visually similar but different sounding) words. The long term goal of this research program is to provide an integrated account of the perceptual, linguistic, and cognitive processes underlying visual speech perception and to characterize the similarities and differences in those processes among individuals with different types of auditory and linguistic experience. To initiate this work we propose four interrelated projects that will study 1) the visual phonetic stimulus, 2) the effects of word homophene, 3) the effects of word knowledge and lexical representation, and 4) the effects of connected speech contexts on word recognition. Direct comparisons will be made among highly proficient speechreader in four populations of subjects, those with: normal hearing, congenital hearing loss, early-onset hearing loss, and adult-onset hearing loss. Methodologies to be employed in the proposed research program will be adapted from the domains of auditory speech perception and spoken word recognition. To the extent that results form speechreading replicate similar ones in the existing literature, it may be concluded that speechreading is but another manifestation of a general human capacity for speech perception, frequently attributed exclusively to audition. Knowledge obtained as a consequence of the proposed research will have applications for the speech and language raining of HI children, speechreading and birotactile aids. Results will provide valuable normative databases for the respective subject populations and have direct application for construction of efficient speechreading tests. Our studies of the perceptual and lexical representations of words by HI subjects will also have implications for reading, and activity whose success in individuals with early hearing loss is highly related to phonological knowledge that may be acquired via speechreading.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
7R01DC002107-03
Application #
2127231
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (ZRG1-HUD-2 (03))
Project Start
1993-12-01
Project End
1997-11-30
Budget Start
1995-09-01
Budget End
1995-11-30
Support Year
3
Fiscal Year
1995
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
House Ear Institute
Department
Type
DUNS #
City
Los Angeles
State
CA
Country
United States
Zip Code
90057
Auer Jr, Edward T; Bernstein, Lynne E (2008) Estimating when and how words are acquired: a natural experiment on the development of the mental lexicon. J Speech Lang Hear Res 51:750-8
Auer Jr, Edward T; Bernstein, Lynne E (2007) Enhanced visual speech perception in individuals with early-onset hearing impairment. J Speech Lang Hear Res 50:1157-65
Auer Jr, Edward T (2002) The influence of the lexicon on speech read word recognition: contrasting segmental and lexical distinctiveness. Psychon Bull Rev 9:341-7
Bernstein, Lynne E; Auer Jr, Edward T; Moore, Jean K et al. (2002) Visual speech perception without primary auditory cortex activation. Neuroreport 13:311-5
Mattys, Sven L; Bernstein, Lynne E; Auer Jr, Edward T (2002) Stimulus-based lexical distinctiveness as a general word-recognition mechanism. Percept Psychophys 64:667-79
Auer Jr, E T; Bernstein, L E; Tucker, P E (2000) Is subjective word familiarity a meter of ambient language? A natural experiment on effects of perceptual experience. Mem Cognit 28:789-97
Bernstein, L E; Demorest, M E; Tucker, P E (2000) Speech perception without hearing. Percept Psychophys 62:233-52
Demorest, M E; Bernstein, L E (1997) Relationships between subjective ratings and objective measures of performance in speechreading sentences. J Speech Lang Hear Res 40:900-11
Auer Jr, E T; Bernstein, L E (1997) Speechreading and the structure of the lexicon: computationally modeling the effects of reduced phonetic distinctiveness on lexical uniqueness. J Acoust Soc Am 102:3704-10