An exploration of why preschoolers perform differently than do adults in audiovisual speech perception tasks

Author(s): Rogers, J., Werker, J. F.

Journal/Book: J Exp Child Psychol. 1997; 66: 525 B St, Ste 1900, San Diego, CA 92101-4495. Academic Press Inc Jnl-Comp Subscriptions. 85-110.

Abstract: Preschoolers' perception of audiovisual speech is considerably less influenced by visual information than adults'. We test the hypothesis that experience correctly producing consonants plays a role in developing the underlying representation which mediates the perception of visible speech. We divided preschoolers into two groups: those who made substitution errors and those who did not. Using a newly developed methodology, we tested substituters, nonsubstituters, and adults in an auditory-only condition, a visual-only condition, and an audiovisual condition. There were no differences among groups in the auditory-only condition. Overall, children still showed less visual influence than adults. Among the children, substituters were poorer at lipreading in the visual-only condition and showed less visual influence on the incongruent audiovisual tokens than did nonsubstituters. These results support our hypothesis that experience correctly producing consonants plays a role in the elaboration of the underlying representation.

Note: Article Desjardins RN, Mcmaster Univ, Dept Psychol, 1280 Main St W, Hamilton, ON L8S 4K1, CANADA

Keyword(s): NORMAL-HEARING ADULTS; VISUAL INFORMATION; LANGUAGE; ORGANIZATION; ABILITY; VOICES

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