Abstract
The effects of two types of auditory distracters (steady-state noise vs. four-talker babble) on visual-only speechreading accuracy were tested against a baseline (silence) in 23 participants with above-average speechreading ability. Their task was to speechread high frequency Swedish words. They were asked to rate their own performance and effort, and report how distracting each type of auditory distracter was. Only four-talker babble impeded speechreading accuracy. This suggests competition for phonological processing, since the four-talker babble demands phonological processing, which is also required for the speechreading task. Better accuracy was associated with lower self-rated effort in silence; no other correlations were found.
Highlights
In everyday speech perception, we hear speech clearly and without effort
Out of the 147 participants in the screening test, 130 agreed to be contacted for the experiment. Their mean score was M = 2.2 words (SD = 2.48 words, range 0–12 words). These results show that visual-only speechreading is a difficult task for most individuals
The present study showed that visual-only speechreading was only impeded by an auditory speech-based distracter, but not by noise itself
Summary
We hear speech clearly and without effort. Speech perception is usually pre-dominantly auditory. A speech signal will be masked by noise (i.e., sounds other than the voice of the person we are trying to hear). The noise can physically interfere with the speech signal (i.e., outside of the perceiver, in the acoustic environment). This is often referred to as energetic masking (Pollack, 1975). The noise can perceptually interfere with the speech signal (i.e., inside the perceiver, in the perceptual process). This is often referred to as informational masking (Pollack, 1975; Watson et al, 1976)
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