The influence of visual speech on lexical access in children

项目摘要/摘要：语音在本质上是多模态的：通信伙伴可以访问两者 听觉和视觉的语音提示在面对面的沟通。在成年人中，视觉语言线索 对于保持准确的语音识别来说， 语音受到听力损失、背景噪音或声音失真的影响。在缺乏视觉的情况下 语音提示，只有语音识别能力差的负面级联效应， 从语音输入中理解和学习。尽管有这些证据，但关于 视觉言语线索是否促进言语识别或破坏听觉技能的发展， 听力损失的儿童这一争论反映在各种语言干预方法中， 对视觉语言线索的依赖程度不同。视觉语言线索对口语的重要程度 然而，听力损失儿童的语言处理和发展尚未得到直接测试。 作为解决这一知识差距的第一步，拟议研究的目标是审查 视觉言语线索的增加在多大程度上促进了学龄儿童的词汇加工， 或没有听力损失。预计从视听演讲中受益最多的是儿童 人工耳蜗植入（CI）患者，患有永久性双侧重度至极重度感音神经性听力损失。 由于CI的局限性，CI儿童通常对仅限语音的语音识别能力较差， 补偿语音的高保真听觉表示的损失。拟议的研究将测试 视听言语相对于单纯言语促进儿童词汇加工的假说 这种改进的处理对语言理解有积极的下游好处。 将招募使用CI或听力正常（NH）的4至10岁儿童。的 选择年龄范围是因为视听言语感知在生命的前十年成熟。的 研究将利用现有的有效措施，增量词汇处理和语言理解 来验证这个假设实时词汇处理的纯语音（目标1）和视听 言语（目标2）将在CI儿童和NH儿童中进行表征。视听的影响 语言理解能力方面的言语能力也将在这些儿童中表现出来（目标3）。我们将 将词汇处理和语言理解任务的表现联系起来。从理论上讲，结果将 支持建立一个全面的词汇处理模型，有和没有视觉语音线索， 患有CI的学龄儿童和NH儿童。这项工作具有实际意义的口语 对CI儿童以及听力损失不太严重的儿童进行语言干预， 不同地利用视觉语音线索。此外，研究结果将为未来的口语研究提供信息 这些干预措施在视觉语言线索的包含方面有所不同。

Project Summary/Abstract: Speech is multimodal in nature: communication partners have access to both auditory and visual speech cues during face-to-face communication. In adults, access to visual speech cues are particularly critical for maintaining accurate speech recognition when the auditory components of speech are compromised by hearing loss, background noise, or sound distortion. In the absence of visual speech cues, poor auditory-only speech recognition has negative cascading effects on the ability to comprehend and learn from the speech input. Despite this evidence, there is an unresolved debate about whether visual speech cues facilitate speech recognition or disrupt the development of auditory skills in children with hearing loss. This debate is reflected in the variety of language intervention approaches that vary in their reliance on visual speech cues. The extent to which visual speech cues are critical to spoken language processing and development in children with hearing loss, however, has not been directly tested. As a first step at addressing this gap in knowledge, the objective of the proposed study is to examine the extent to which the addition of visual speech cues facilitates lexical processing in school-age children with or without hearing loss. Children who are expected to benefit the most from audiovisual speech are children with cochlear implants (CIs), who have permanent bilateral severe-to-profound sensorineural hearing loss. Children with CIs often have poor recognition of auditory-only speech due to limitations of the CIs to fully compensate for the loss of high fidelity auditory representations of speech. The proposed study will test the hypothesis that audiovisual speech facilitates lexical processing relative to auditory-only speech in children with CIs and that this improved processing has positive downstream benefits for language comprehension. Children who are ages 4 to 10 years who use CIs or who have normal hearing (NH) will be recruited. The age range was chosen because audiovisual speech perception matures over the first decade of life. The study will utilize existing validated measures of incremental lexical processing and language comprehension to test the hypothesis. Real-time lexical processing of auditory-only speech (Aim 1) and of audiovisual speech (Aim 2) will be characterized in children with CIs and children with NH. The effects of audiovisual speech on language comprehension skills will also be characterized in the same children (Aim 3). We will relate performance on lexical processing and language comprehension tasks. Theoretically, the results will support the creation of a comprehensive model of lexical processing with and without visual speech cues in school-age children with CIs and children with NH. This work has practical implications for spoken language interventions for children with CIs as well as children with less severe hearing loss, who may differentially utilize visual speech cues. In addition, the results will inform future studies of spoken language interventions that vary in their inclusion of visual speech cues.