VISUAL STRATEGIES USED BY HEARING-IMPAIRED ADULTS

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The long-term objective of this research is to understand the stimulus and task demands in speechreading, a form of human information processing. Virtually all observers, and especially people with impaired hearing, rely on visual information in difficult listening situations. The specific aim of this study is to investigate the visual strategies used by hearing-impaired adults during speechreading and relate these to speechreading performance levels. Eye monitoring techniques will be used to gain knowledge regarding where an individual looks when trying to speechread, how conceptual states influence looking and what visual cues are used during speechreading. This knowledge is critical to test hypotheses regarding the stimulus and task demands in speechreading. An understanding of visual strategies has important implications for the design of sensory aids and development of research-based intervention protocols to augment speechreading performance. Patterns of eye gaze will be analyzed for oral-deaf adults who demonstrate excellent speechreading performance and for hearing-impaired individuals who must rely on speechreading in difficult listening situations. Eye gaze behaviors will be interpreted with regard to direction, duration and sequence of eye movement associated with particular facial regions of a talker. Patterns of eye gaze will be evaluated for groups of subjects who vary with respect to speechreading performance. Additional experiments are designed in which individual subjects serve as their own controls and cognitive states or physical characteristics of the speechreading signal are manipulated. Visible aerodynamic correlates for speech events will be correlated with visual strategies during speechreading. The results of these preliminary studies will be used to develop additional hypotheses regarding perceptual learning and rehabilitation strategies for individuals with hearing-impairments.