A Comparative Analysis of the Audiovisual, Auditive and Visual Perception of Speech

Abstract

This is first part of a long-term study. According to examinations of 30 subjects in the age groups 20, 50, and 70 years, all with normal hearing, perception of speech in noise was found to deteriorate with age, whether determined on the basis of audition alone or on audition+vision. The capacity to perceive purely visual speech was found to be least satisfactory among subjects in the age group 70 years. A comparison of the purely visual perception of speech and the audiovisual perception indicated that there is some correlation between the two. Audiovisual results are more reliably reproduced than the auditive ones, thereby indicating that the selection of hearing aids should be incorporated into the audiovisual test situation in noise. With a view to the further advances in the testing of audiovisual speech perception, the requirement must be an elaboration of a stimulus word material, which makes equal allowance for the auditive, the audiovisual and the visual perception.