Visual Influence on Auditory Perception of Vowels by French-Speaking Children and Adults.

Paméla Trudeau-Fisette,Laureline Arnaud,Lucie Ménard

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.740271

Abstract

Audiovisual interaction in speech perception is well defined in adults. Despite the large body of evidence suggesting that children are also sensitive to visual input, very few empirical studies have been conducted. To further investigate whether visual inputs influence auditory perception of phonemes in preschoolers in the same way as in adults, we conducted an audiovisual identification test. The auditory stimuli (/e/-/ø/ continuum) were presented either in an auditory condition only or simultaneously with a visual presentation of the articulation of the vowel /e/ or /ø/. The results suggest that, although all participants experienced visual influence on auditory perception, substantial individual differences exist in the 5- to 6-year-old group. While additional work is required to confirm this hypothesis, we suggest that auditory and visual systems are developing at that age and that multisensory phonological categorization of the rounding contrast took place only in children whose sensory systems and sensorimotor representations were mature.

Highlights

In neurotypical individuals, face-to-face communication is multisensory (Rosenblum, 2008a,b)
In a recent paper (Trudeau-Fisette et al, 2019), we investigated a specific case of multisensory processing, namely, the interaction between auditory and somatosensory input during vowel perception in children and adults
We report on an experiment carried out to investigate whether processing of auditory and visual information occurs in preschool-aged children in the same way as it does in adults

Summary

Introduction

Face-to-face communication is multisensory (Rosenblum, 2008a,b). Multisensory processing is crucial for efficient perception, as it optimizes brain functions and reduces perceptual ambiguity (Stein et al, 2014; Gori, 2015). Since sensory systems are not mature at birth, but evolve and are calibrated throughout childhood (Burr and Gori, 2012), multisensory processing constantly adapts to different kinds of inputs (Birch and Lefford, 1963; Yu et al, 2010). The brain areas shown to be involved in multisensory processing are not operational at birth but develop with experience (Stein et al, 2014). Despite its crucial role in speech perception and its continuing refinement in the first years of life, very little is known about the development of multisensory processing in the specific area of speech

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