Bisensory vs summed-unisensory improvement on two speech-reception tasks.
It is known that in speech reception tasks, when performance scores in the auditory-only (A) mode and the visual-only (V) mode are simply added, the result will be substantially less than when eyes and ears can simultaneously process the stimuli (A/V mode). However, it is not known whether the improvement with practice and/or training with feedback is greater in the A+V or the A/V mode. Normal young adults (N:20) watched and listened in the A/V mode and responded to 100 key words in sentences spoken by a man on a 25-inch color TV at a distance of 6 ft, both before and after training with feedback on other lists of 100 key words. In the training condition, half the Ss were given the A mode first, half the V mode. Within the training condition, pre- and post-training test phases of 100 key words each had a training phase intervening in which feedback was given on 100 different key words. Performance significantly improved from 28.8% to 35.0% words correct within the training condition, averaged over A and V mode (6.2%; p less than .001), but it improved from 68.5% to 86.0% (= 17.5%; p less than .001) in the pre- vs post-training comparison for the A/V mode. The difference of 11.3% in favor of the A/V mode was significant (p less than .01). Essentially zero correlation was found between individual improvements in the A+V vs the A/V mode. The acquisition and utilization of A, V, and A/V skills are independent and specific. Each mode may have its optimum set of training conditions.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Department of Communicative Disorders, University of Arkanses Medical Sciences Campus, Little Rock.
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Wilhite
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Dancer
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Rozema
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D006801:Humans; D013063:Speech Discrimination Tests / Q000379:methods*; D013067:Speech Perception; D013069:Speech Reception Threshold Test / Q000379:methods*; D014796:Visual Perception