Audiovisual speech perception research has shown an increasing use of visual information from infancy to young adulthood. The current study extends these findings by examining audiovisual speech perception from young adulthood to mid-adulthood by addressing the extent to which audio, visual and audiovisual cues are used for place of articulation identification. Responses were gathered with young adults (19-30 yrs) and mid-aged adults (49-60 yrs) for voiceless and voiced audiovisual consonant-vowel syllables differing in consonant place of articulation. Materials were presented in quiet and in cafe noise (SNR=0dB). Results show that mid-aged adults made greater use of visual information than young adults in both quiet and noise, suggesting more than compensation for natural changes in hearing. This was evident across places of articulation and voicing conditions where mid-aged adults showed further indications for using visual cues. Findings indicate that the processing of sensory information continues to change in the course of adulthood with the use of visual cues in audiovisual speech perception increasing with the experience that comes with age.
['Dawn M. Behne', 'Yue Wang', 'Magnus Alm', 'Ingrid Arntsen', 'Ragnhild Eg', 'Ane Valsø']
Changes in audio-visual speech perception during adulthood