Children with hearing loss face a range of challenges when listening to and processing speech; in particular, they may process spoken language slowly in comparison to normalhearing peers [1]. How then can speech processing speed be improved for children with hearing loss? In this study, a phoneme monitoring task was used to assess whether 7-11year-old children with hearing loss showed faster speech processing when visual speech cues were available compared to auditory-only presentation. Children with hearing loss did receive an audiovisual benefit for processing speed, however this was primarily driven by cases in which the target phoneme in the monitoring task was visually salient. No difference was found between the performance of the children with hearing loss and a control group of children with normal hearing, however the results suggest that children with hearing loss who use hearing aids may receive a greater audiovisual benefit for processing speed than those who use cochlear implants. These findings have implications for practical interventions for children with hearing loss.
Cite as: Holt, R., Bruggeman, L., Demuth, K. (2019) Audiovisual benefits for speech processing speed among children with hearing loss. Proc. The 15th International Conference on Auditory-Visual Speech Processing, 47-52, doi: 10.21437/AVSP.2019-10
@inproceedings{holt19_avsp,
author={Rebecca Holt and Laurence Bruggeman and Katherine Demuth},
title={{Audiovisual benefits for speech processing speed among children with hearing loss}},
year=2019,
booktitle={Proc. The 15th International Conference on Auditory-Visual Speech Processing},
pages={47--52},
doi={10.21437/AVSP.2019-10}
}