title: Age-related changes in the visual perception of phonologically significant contrasts.
abstract: The purpose of the present study was to determine whether the ability to speechread phonological contrasts is influenced by age. Forty-eight subjects were equally represented in three age groups: 8-9 years, 11-12 years and adults (20-29 years). The Hebrew version of the Speech Pattern Contrast (HeSPAC) test was administered by speechreading alone. Results showed that: age influenced performance; performance was contrast-dependent (place contrasts highly visible, manner and vowel height partially visible and voicing contrast invisible); hierarchy of contrast performance was similar for all age groups; Hebrew and English differ in the visual accessibility to speech contrasts in final voicing only; and females were found to be poorer speechreaders than males for the partially visible contrasts. The results suggest that speechreading at the phonological level follows a developmental course. The implications of these findings extend to recommendations provided to children in noisy listening conditions, speechreading training in hearing-impaired children and those with central auditory processing disorders (CAPD), and to the design of sensory aids.
authors.affiliation: Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Israel. lrabin@post.tau.ac.il
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Kishon-Rabin
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Henkin
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D004365:Drugs, Chinese Herbal; D028001:Eleutherococcus; D006801:Humans; D008085:Lipreading; D010700:Phonetics; D011897:Random Allocation; D012737:Sex Factors; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*
chemical_list: D004365:Drugs, Chinese Herbal; C400150:Acanthopanax gracilistylus, extract