Visual speech processing: word-decoding and word-discrimination related to sentence-based speechreading and hearing-impairment.
Two aspects of visual speech processing in speechreading (word decoding and word discrimination) were tested in a group of 24 normal hearing and a group of 20 hearing-impaired subjects. Word decoding and word discrimination performance were independent of factors related to the impairment, both in a quantitative and a qualitative sense. Decoding skill, but not discrimination skill, was associated with sentence-based speechreading. The results were interpreted such that, in order to represent a critical component process in sentence-based speechreading, the visual speech perception task must entail lexically induced processing as a task-demand. The theoretical status of the word decoding task as one operationalization of a speech decoding module was discussed (Fodor, 1983). An error analysis of performance in the word decoding/discrimination tasks suggested that the perception of heard stimuli, as well as the perception of lipped stimuli, were critically dependent on the same features; that is, the temporally initial phonetic segment of the word (cf. Marslen-Wilson, 1987). Implications for a theory of visual speech perception were discussed.
Lyxell
B
B
Department of Education and Psychology, Linköping University, Sweden.
Rönnberg
J
J
D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D005260:Female; D006310:Hearing Aids; D006312:Hearing Loss, Bilateral / Q000523:psychology*; D006319:Hearing Loss, Sensorineural / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D008085:Lipreading; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010700:Phonetics; D012660:Semantics; D013063:Speech Discrimination Tests; D013067:Speech Perception