Visible speech improves human language understanding: Implications for speech processing systems

Abstract

Evidence from the study of human language understanding is presented suggesting that our ability to perceive visible speech can greatly influence our ability to understand and remember spoken language. A view of the speaker’s face can greatly aid in the perception of ambiguous or noisy speech and can aid cognitive processing of speech leading to better understanding and recall. Some of these effects have been replicated using computer synthesized visual and auditory speech. Thus, it appears that when giving an interface a voice, it may be best to give it a face too.