Informational Masking of Speech in Children: Auditory-visual Integration

Overview

Journal J Acoust Soc Am

Publisher American Institute of Physics

Specialty Otorhinolaryngology

Date 2006 Jul 15

PMID 16838537

Citations 47

Authors

Frederic Wightman

Doris Kistler

Douglas Brungart

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

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.

Citing Articles

Children's use of spatial and visual cues for release from perceptual masking.

Lalonde K, Peng Z, Halverson D, Dwyer G J Acoust Soc Am. 2024; 155(2):1559-1569.

PMID: 38393738 PMC: 10890829. DOI: 10.1121/10.0024766.

Impact of room acoustics and visual cues on speech perception and talker localization by children with mild bilateral or unilateral hearing loss.

Lewis D, Al-Salim S, McDermott T, Dergan A, McCreery R Front Pediatr. 2023; 11:1252452.

PMID: 38078311 PMC: 10703386. DOI: 10.3389/fped.2023.1252452.

The Effect of Sound Localization on Auditory-Only and Audiovisual Speech Recognition in a Simulated Multitalker Environment.

Sheffield S, Wheeler H, Brungart D, Bernstein J Trends Hear. 2023; 27:23312165231186040.

PMID: 37415497 PMC: 10331332. DOI: 10.1177/23312165231186040.

Semantic Cues Modulate Children's and Adults' Processing of Audio-Visual Face Mask Speech.

Schwarz J, Li K, Sim J, Zhang Y, Buchanan-Worster E, Post B Front Psychol. 2022; 13:879156.

PMID: 35928422 PMC: 9343587. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.879156.

Face Masks Impact Auditory and Audiovisual Consonant Recognition in Children With and Without Hearing Loss.

Lalonde K, Buss E, Miller M, Leibold L Front Psychol. 2022; 13:874345.

PMID: 35645844 PMC: 9137424. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.874345.

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