Informational masking of speech in children: auditory-visual integration.
The focus of this study was the release from informational masking that could be obtained in a speech task by viewing a video of the target talker. A closed-set speech recognition paradigm was used to measure informational masking in 23 children (ages 6-16 years) and 10 adults. An audio-only condition required attention to a monaural target speech message that was presented to the same ear with a time-synchronized distracter message. In an audiovisual condition, a synchronized video of the target talker was also presented to assess the release from informational masking that could be achieved by speechreading. Children required higher target/distracter ratios than adults to reach comparable performance levels in the audio-only condition, reflecting a greater extent of informational masking in these listeners. There was a monotonic age effect, such that even the children in the oldest age group (12-16.9 years) demonstrated performance somewhat poorer than adults. Older children and adults improved significantly in the audiovisual condition, producing a release from informational masking of 15 dB or more in some adult listeners. Audiovisual presentation produced no informational masking release for the youngest children. Across all ages, the benefit of a synchronized video was strongly associated with speechreading ability.
Wightman
Frederic
F
Heuser Hearing Institute, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky 40292, USA. fred.wightman@louisville.edu
Kistler
Doris
D
Brungart
Douglas
D
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D001303:Auditory Cortex / Q000502:physiology; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010470:Perceptual Masking / Q000502:physiology*; D011571:Psychoacoustics; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014785:Vision, Ocular / Q000502:physiology; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000502:physiology; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*