Perceptual Cues Research Articles

Breathy Vocal Quality, Background Noise, and Hearing Loss: How Do These Adverse Conditions Affect Speech Perception by Older Adults?

Although breathy vocal quality and hearing loss are both prevalent age-related changes, their combined impact on speech communication is poorly understood. This study investigated whether breathy vocal quality affected speech perception and listening effort by older listeners. Furthermore, the study examined how this effect was modulated by the adverse listening environment of background noise and the listener's level of hearing loss. Nineteen older adults participated in the study. Their hearing ranged from near-normal to mild-moderate sensorineural hearing loss. Participants heard speech material of low-context sentences, with stimuli resynthesized to simulate original, mild-moderately breathy, and severely breathy conditions. Speech intelligibility was measured using a speech recognition in noise paradigm, with pupillometry data collected simultaneously to measure listening effort. Simulated severely breathy vocal quality was found to reduce intelligibility and increase listening effort. Breathiness and background noise level independently modulated listening effort. The impact of hearing loss was not observed in this dataset, which can be due to the use of individualized signal to noise ratios and a small sample size. Results from this study demonstrate the challenges of listening to speech with a breathy vocal quality. Theoretically, the findings highlight the importance of periodicity cues in speech perception in noise by older listeners. Breathy voice could be challenging to separate from the noise when the noise also lacks periodicity. Clinically, it suggests the need to address both listener- and talker-related factors in speech communication by older adults.

Investigating the relationship between subjective perception and unconscious feature integration.

Visual features need to be temporally integrated to detect motion signals and solve the many ill-posed problems of vision. It has previously been shown that such integration occurs in windows of unconscious processing of up to 450 milliseconds. However, whether features are integrated should be governed by perceptually meaningful mechanisms. Here, we expand on previous findings suggesting that subjective perception and integration may be linked. Specifically, different observers were found to group elements differently and to exhibit corresponding feature integration behavior. If the former were to influence the latter, perception would appear to not only be the outcome of integration but to potentially also be part of it. To test any such linkages more systematically, we here examined the role of one of the key perceptual grouping cues, color similarity, in the Sequential Metacontrast Paradigm (SQM). In the SQM, participants are presented with two streams of lines that are expanding from the center outwards. If several lines in the attended motion stream are offset, offsets integrate unconsciously and mandatorily for periods of up to 450 milliseconds. Across three experiments, we presented lines of varied colors. Our results reveal that individuals who perceive differently colored lines as "popping out" from the motion stream do not exhibit mandatory integration but that individuals who perceive such lines as part of an integrated motion stream do show offset integration behavior across the entire stream. These results attest to the proposed linkage between subjective perception and integration behavior in the SQM.

From Avatars to Agents: Self-Related Cues Through Embodiment and Personalization Affect Body Perception in Virtual Reality.

Our work investigates the influence of self-related cues in the design of virtual humans on body perception in virtual reality. In a $2\times 2$ mixed design, 64 participants faced photorealistic virtual humans either as a motion-synchronized embodied avatar or as an autonomous moving agent, appearing subsequently with a personalized and generic texture. Our results unveil that self-related cues through embodiment and personalization yield an individual and complemented increase in participants' sense of embodiment and self-identification towards the virtual human. Different body weight modification and estimation tasks further showed an impact of both factors on participants' body weight perception. Additional analyses revealed that the participant's body mass index predicted body weight estimations in all conditions and that participants' self-esteem and body shape concerns correlated with different body weight perception results. Hence, we have demonstrated the occurrence of double standards through induced self-related cues in virtual human perception, especially through embodiment.

Effect of self-movement on visually directed throwing: Implications for distance perception

ABSTRACT This study investigated how running on a treadmill influences the accuracy of throwing a ball to a hoop. Based upon previous research carried out in an open field that demonstrates that targets are perceived further away when running on a treadmill compared to when standing, we examined if this effect persisted in a visually directed throwing task. Fourteen athletes with normal or corrected vision participated. In Experiment 1, participants made indirect distance estimates of targets at 6 m, showing larger estimates while running. In Experiment 2, participants performed a throwing task, aiming to throw balls into a hoop while running or standing on a treadmill. The results showed that running on a treadmill influenced distance estimation, leading to larger throws. These findings suggest that the perception of distance is a process that relies on perceptual cues and sensorimotor feedback.

Category-dependent contribution of dog facial and bodily cues in human perception of dog emotions

The increasing popularity of human-dog interaction in our society calls for fuller understanding of humans’ ability to appraise dogs’ affective states, yet most research only focuses on recognizing dog facial expressions of primary/basic emotions. While the face is the dominant human emotional expression channel, bodily cues are also informative indicators of dog emotional states. In this online study, with dynamic and naturalistic videos depicting a common range of dog primary (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise) and secondary emotions (appeasement, frustration, pain, positive anticipation, separation-distress), we compared human performance from 447 participants in categorizing dog facial expressions (with a visible dog face only) and bodily expressions (with a visible dog face and body). The analysis revealed when averaging across all tested emotions, bodily expression tended to attract higher categorization accuracy than facial expression. However, the two expression channels demonstrated category-dependent modification of dog emotion categorization accuracy (e.g., higher accuracy in recognizing facial expressions of anger and surprise, but bodily expressions of happiness and fear) and bias (e.g., mistaking fear facial expression as happiness, but fear bodily expression as sadness). Furthermore, the impact of owner experience on recognizing dog emotions was also modulated by the expression channel and emotion category (e.g., prolonged experience with dogs tended to improve performance in recognizing the fear facial expression, and the appeasement bodily expression). Taken together, these results suggest that different channels of emotional expression by dogs may transmit category-specific diagnostic emotional cues, which aid human appraisal of their affective states.

Processing of prosodic cues of uncertainty in autistic and non-autistic adults: a study based on articulatory speech synthesis.

We investigated the prosodic perception of uncertainty cues in adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) compared to neurotypical adults (NTC). We used articulatory synthetic speech to express uncertainty in a human-machine scenario by varying the three acoustic cues pause, intonation, and hesitation. Twenty-eight adults with ASD and 28 NTC adults rated each answer for uncertainty, naturalness, and comprehensibility. Both groups reliably perceived different levels of uncertainty. Stimuli were rated as less uncertain by the ASD group, but not significantly. Only when we pooled the recipients' ratings for all three cues, did we find a significant group difference. In terms of reaction time, we observed longer reaction times in the ASD group compared to the neurotypical comparison group for the uncertainty level hesitation & strong intonation, but the differences were not significant after Bonferroni correction. Furthermore, our results showed a significant group difference between the correlation of uncertainty and naturalness, i.e. the correlation in the ASD group is significantly lower than in the NTC group. Obtained effect size estimates can inform sample size calculations in future studies for the reliable identification of group differences. In future work, we would like to further investigate the interaction of all three cues and uncertainty perception. It would be interesting to further vary the duration of the pause and also to use different types of fillers. From a developmental perspective, uncertainty perception should also be investigated in children and adolescents with ASD.

Perception of voice cues and speech-in-speech by children with prelingual single-sided deafness and a cochlear implant

Voice cues, such as fundamental frequency (F0) and vocal tract length (VTL), help listeners identify the speaker's gender, perceive the linguistic and emotional prosody, and segregate competing talkers. Postlingually implanted adult cochlear implant (CI) users seem to have difficulty in perceiving and making use of voice cues, especially of VTL. Early implanted child CI users, in contrast, perceive and make use of both voice cues better than CI adults, and in patterns similar to their peers with normal hearing (NH).In our study, we investigated the perception and use of voice cues in children with single-sided deafness (SSD) who received their CI at an early age (SSD+CI), in an attempt to bridge the gap between these two groups. The SSD+CI children have access to bilateral auditory information and often receive their CI at an early age, similar to CI children. They may also have dominant acoustic representations, similar to CI adults who acquired hearing loss at a later age. As such, the current study aimed to investigate the perception and use of voice cues by a group of nine early-implanted children with prelingual SSD. The study consisted of three experiments: F0 and VTL discrimination, voice gender categorization, and speech-in-speech perception. In each experiment, the results of the SSD group are compared to children and adults with CIs (for their CI ear) and with typical hearing (for their NH ear).Overall, the SSD+CI children had poorer VTL detection thresholds with their CI compared to their NH ear, while their F0 perception was similar across ears. Detection thresholds for both F0 and VTL with their CI ear was comparable to those of bilaterally implanted CI children, suggesting that SSD+CI children do not only rely on their NH ear, but actually make use of their CI. SSD+CI children relied more heavily on F0 cues than on VTL cues for voice gender categorization, with cue weighting patterns comparable to those of CI adults. In contrast to CI children, the SSD+CI children showed limited speech perception benefit based on F0 and VTL differences between the target and masker speaker, which again corresponded to the results of CI adults. Altogether, the SSD+CI children make good use of their CI, despite a good-hearing ear, however, the perceptual patterns seem to fall in-between those of CI children and CI adults. Perhaps a combination of childhood neuroplasticity, limited experience with relying only on the CI, and a dominant acoustic representation of voice gender explain these results.

Temporal speech cue perception in listeners with cochlear implants depends on the time between those cues and previous sound energy.

Cochlear implants (CIs) provide precise temporal information that listeners use to understand speech. Other acoustic cues are not conveyed as precisely, making unambiguous temporal speech cues vital to a listener's ability to understand speech. Several speech sounds are differentiated by small differences in the timing of acoustic features. Previous studies have shown differences in the perception of these differences, depending on whether the speech sound was heard in a single word or embedded in a sentence. This study expands on previous research by exploring forward masking as a possible contributor to the mechanisms driving the effects observed when temporal cues were embedded in sentences. Listeners using CIs performed a phoneme categorization task on words from four continua that each varied mainly on a single temporal dimension. The differentiating phonemes were located at the beginning of the word in two continua and at the end of the word in two others. Silent intervals of 0, 25, 50, 75, and 100 ms between the preceding sentence and the target words were tested. Results showed an increasing effect on performance as the inter-stimulus interval duration decreased for the two word-initial phonemic contrasts, lending support to forward masking as an influence on speech understanding.

Taxonomic and functional diversity of foliage‐dwelling ants in conventional and organic agroecosystems in southern Brazil: A landscape perspective

Abstract In modern landscapes, understanding how land use and land cover, specifically agriculture, affect biodiversity and ecological functions is essential for conservation. According to Brazilian law, agroecosystems must include areas designated for biodiversity conservation called Legal Reserves. We evaluated the taxonomic and functional diversity of foliage‐dwelling ants in Legal Reserves of agroecosystems in the south of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. We aimed to understand how land use and land cover at different landscape scales affect the ant fauna. We sampled ant communities in organic and conventional agroecosystems using passive and active sampling methods (arboreal pitfall traps and active sample, respectively). For the analysis of functional diversity, we measured morphological attributes related to the ecological strategies of ants, such as perception of visual cues, foraging and resource acquisition. We characterized the landscape by visual interpretation of high‐resolution satellite imagery within a 100 m, 500 m and 1 km radius of the sampling areas. We did not identify any effects of cultivation systems on ant fauna. However, we found that landscape characteristics, such as the proportion of natural forest within 100 m, positively affected functional richness. Additionally, within 500 m, natural forest coverage, along with the proportion of cultivation, positively influenced ant incidence. We emphasize the function of Legal Reserves around farms, of serving as support to maintain the presence of ants and the diversity of ecological functions performed by these organisms. We also emphasize that new studies in the region should investigate how a higher homogenization of cultures and cultivation systems, including other phyto‐physiognomies, influence the myrmecofauna of these environments.

Temporal dynamics of coarticulatory cues to prediction.

The temporal dynamics of the perception of within-word coarticulatory cues remain a subject of ongoing debate in speech perception research. This behavioral gating study sheds light on the unfolding predictive use of anticipatory coarticulation in onset fricatives. Word onset fricatives (/f/ and /s/) were split into four gates (15, 35, 75 and 135 milliseconds). Listeners made a forced choice about the word they were listening to, based on the stimulus gates. The results showed fast predictive use of coarticulatory lip rounding during /s/ word onsets, as early as 15 ms from word onset. For /f/ onsets, coarticulatory backness and height began to be used predictively after 75 ms. These findings indicate that onset times of the occurrence and use of coarticulatory cues can be extremely fast and have a time course that differs depending on fricative type.

Rats rely on airflow cues for self-motion perception

Self-motion perception is a vital skill for all species. It is an inherently multisensory process that combines inertial (body-based) and relative (with respect to the environment) motion cues. Although extensively studied in human and non-human primates, there is currently no paradigm to test self-motion perception in rodents using both inertial and relative self-motion cues. We developed a novel rodent motion simulator using two synchronized robotic arms to generate inertial, relative, or combined (inertial and relative) cues of self-motion. Eight rats were trained to perform a task of heading discrimination, similar to the popular primate paradigm. Strikingly, the rats relied heavily on airflow for relative self-motion perception, with little contribution from the (limited) optic flow cues provided-performance in the dark was almost as good. Relative self-motion (airflow) was perceived with greater reliability vs. inertial. Disrupting airflow, using a fan or windshield, damaged relative, but not inertial, self-motion perception. However, whiskers were not needed for this function. Lastly, the rats integrated relative and inertial self-motion cues in a reliability-based (Bayesian-like) manner. These results implicate airflow as an important cue for self-motion perception in rats and provide a new domain to investigate the neural bases of self-motion perception and multisensory processing in awake behaving rodents.

Increased alertness and moderate ingroup cohesion in bonobos' response to outgroup cues.

In a number of species, including humans, perceived outgroup threat can promote ingroup cohesion. However, the distribution and selection history of this association across species with varied intergroup relations remains unclear. Using a sample of 8 captive groups (N = 43 individuals), we here tested whether bonobos, like chimpanzees, show more affiliative ingroup behaviour following perception of outgroup cues (unfamiliar male long-distance vocalisations). We used comparable methods to our previous study of captive chimpanzees, and found that, although weaker, there was an association for more frequent social grooming in response to the outgroup condition than the control condition, alongside more alert posture and increased self-directed behaviour. This provides preliminary evidence for an ancestral origin to the proximate association between outgroup cues and ingroup cohesion, at least prior to the Pan-Homo split, and suggests the presence of intergroup competition in our last common ancestor.

Mandarin non-interrogative wh-words distinguish between children with Developmental Language Disorder and Language-Impaired autistic children

ABSTRACT Language profile resemblance between autistic 1 1 The current paper uses “identity-first” language throughout, which is often favored by autistic individuals and their parents (Kenny et al. 2016). children who are language-impaired and children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) gives rise to misdiagnosis of the two conditions. Aiming to better understand the underlying causes of language impairments in autism language impaired (ALI) and DLD, the present study adopts a question-statement task to investigate the ability to determine the non-interrogative interpretation of Mandarin wh-words on the basis of syntactic-semantic cues and prosodic cues. The results show that both the ALI and the DLD groups have difficulty using the syntactic-semantic cues to access the non-interrogative interpretations of Mandarin wh-words. However, only the performance of the ALI group correlates with their extralinguistic cognitive ability. Furthermore, the two groups performed differently in using the prosodic cues: the DLD group scores significantly higher than the ALI group on the perception of the prosodic cues. The different linguistic profiles found in the current study suggest that ALI may not simply be a comorbidity of autism and DLD, as has often been proposed. The study’s findings also have the potential to improve diagnostic procedure and to increase accuracy of differential diagnosis in children.

Meat Color, Marbling, and the Evaluation of Defects in Beef and Pork at the Point of Purchase

Intentions to purchase meat and repeat purchasing patterns will depend on the consumer’s perception of intrinsic and extrinsic quality cues. In order to discover consumers’ insights into the quality of pork and beef, the main objective of this study was to investigate meat color, marbling, and types of fresh meat defects. A total of 50 samples of meat were analyzed for three quality characteristics on different levels. This study applied a statistical calculation of a loss function invented by Taguchi. The results showed the values of variations in meat color and marbling that present the limits of consumers’ tolerance. Based on the obtained results, it was determined that the tolerable level of color variations of beef is 3.61, while for pork, this limit is 2.00. The most preferred marbling percentages were 21% and 5.74% for beef and pork, respectively. On the other hand, the negative effect of defects was the strongest for “dark cutting” for beef and “blood spotting” for pork loins.

Persepsi Orang Tua dan Pengasuh terhadap Pemberian Imunisasi Rutin pada Balita Pasca Pandemi Covid-19

Immunization is an effective strategy of the government to reduce morbidity and mortality from Preventable Diseases by Immunization (PD3I). During the Covid-19 pandemic, this situation had a significant impact on the health sector, reducing immunization coverage rates. Currently, Indonesia is in the post-Covid-19 pandemic phase characterized by positive trends in pandemic control. This study aims to understand the perceptions of parents or caregivers regarding the provision of routine immunization to children in the post-Covid-19 pandemic era. The research method used a cross-sectional design with sampling using the quota sampling method, with a total of 100 respondents. Data were collected through a questionnaire adopting the health belief model theory to parents or caregivers who brought their children to the Posyandu for immunization. The results showed that perceptions of vulnerability (p value = 0,071), seriousness (p value = 0,121), and cues to action (p value = 0,731) had an insignificant effect on immunization for toddlers, while perceptions of benefits (p value = 0,008), barriers (p value = 0,000), and self-efficacy (p value = 0,000) had a significant effect on immunization for toddlers in the post-Covid-19 pandemic era (p value < 0.05). The components of the health belief model that form the perceptions of parents or caregivers towards immunization are interconnected, although not all are statistically significant. Therefore, perceptions of vulnerability, seriousness, and cues to action need to be improved to form a good perception of immunization after the Covid-19 pandemic

Evaluating Changes in Adult Cochlear Implant Users' Brain and Behavior Following Auditory Training.

To describe the effects of two types of auditory training on both behavioral and physiological measures of auditory function in cochlear implant (CI) users, and to examine whether a relationship exists between the behavioral and objective outcome measures. This study involved two experiments, both of which used a within-subject design. Outcome measures included behavioral and cortical electrophysiological measures of auditory processing. In Experiment I, 8 CI users participated in a music-based auditory training. The training program included both short training sessions completed in the laboratory as well as a set of 12 training sessions that participants completed at home over the course of a month. As part of the training program, study participants listened to a range of different musical stimuli and were asked to discriminate stimuli that differed in pitch or timbre and to identify melodic changes. Performance was assessed before training and at three intervals during and after training was completed. In Experiment II, 20 CI users participated in a more focused auditory training task: the detection of spectral ripple modulation depth. Training consisted of a single 40-minute session that took place in the laboratory under the supervision of the investigators. Behavioral and physiologic measures of spectral ripple modulation depth detection were obtained immediately pre- and post-training. Data from both experiments were analyzed using mixed linear regressions, paired t tests, correlations, and descriptive statistics. In Experiment I, there was a significant improvement in behavioral measures of pitch discrimination after the study participants completed the laboratory and home-based training sessions. There was no significant effect of training on electrophysiologic measures of the auditory N1-P2 onset response and acoustic change complex (ACC). There were no significant relationships between electrophysiologic measures and behavioral outcomes after the month-long training. In Experiment II, there was no significant effect of training on the ACC, although there was a small but significant improvement in behavioral spectral ripple modulation depth thresholds after the short-term training. This study demonstrates that auditory training improves spectral cue perception in CI users, with significant perceptual gains observed despite cortical electrophysiological responses like the ACC not reliably predicting training benefits across short- and long-term interventions. Future research should further explore individual factors that may lead to greater benefit from auditory training, in addition to optimization of training protocols and outcome measures, as well as demonstrate the generalizability of these findings.

Prenatal affective cognitive training to reduce the risk of postpartum depression (PACT): study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

BackgroundPostpartum depression (PPD) affects 30–50% of women with a history of previous depression or bipolar disorder and 8% of women with no history of depression. Negative cognitive biases in the perception of infant cues and difficulties with emotion regulation are replicated risk factors. Current interventions focus on detecting and treating rather than preventing PPD. The aim of this randomized controlled intervention trial is therefore to investigate the potential prophylactic effects of prenatal affective cognitive training for pregnant women at heightened risk of PPD.MethodsThe study will enrol a total of 292 pregnant women: 146 at high risk and 146 at low risk of PPD. Participants undergo comprehensive assessments of affective cognitive processing, clinical depressive symptoms, and complete questionnaires at baseline. Based on the responses, pregnant women will be categorized as either at high or low risk of PPD. High-risk participants will be randomized to either prenatal affective cognitive training (PACT) or care as usual (CAU) immediately after the baseline testing. The PACT intervention is based on emerging evidence for efficacy of affective cognitive training approaches in depression, including cognitive bias modification, attention bias modification, mindfulness-inspired emotion regulation exercises, and working memory training. Participants randomised to PACT will complete five individual computerised and virtual reality-based training sessions over 5 weeks. The primary outcome is the difference between intervention arms in the incidence of PPD, assessed with an interview 6 months after birth. We will also assess the severity of depressive symptoms, rated weekly online during the first 6 weeks postpartum.DiscussionThe results will have implications for future early prophylactic interventions for pregnant women at heightened risk of PPD. If the PACT intervention reduces the incidence of PPD, it can become a feasible, non-invasive prophylactic strategy during pregnancy, with positive mental health implications for these women and their children.Trial registrationClinicalTrials.gov NCT06046456 registered 21-09-2023, updated 08-07-2024.

The facilitators and barriers to implementing virtual visits in intensive care units: A mixed-methods systematic review.

Visitation has a positive effect on patients and families, yet, it can disrupt intensive care unit (ICU) care and increase the risk of patient infections, which previously favoured face-to-face visits. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has raised the importance of virtual visits and led to their widespread adoption globally, there are still many implementation barriers that need to be improved. Therefore, this review aimed to explore the use of ICU virtual visit technology during the COVID-19 pandemic and the barriers and facilitators of virtual visits to improve virtual visits in ICUs. Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines, six databases (CINAHL, China National Knowledge Infrastructure [CNKI], PubMed, Cochrane, VIP and Wang Fang databases) were searched for empirical studies published between 1 January 2020 and 22 October 2023. Studies that investigated and reported barriers to and facilitators of implementing virtual visits in ICUs during the COVID-19 pandemic were included. Evidence from the included studies was identified and thematically analysed using Thomas and Harden's three-step approach. Study quality was appraised with the Mixed-Methods Appraisal Tool. A total of 6770 references were screened, of which 35 studies met the inclusion criteria after a full-text review. Eight main barriers to virtual visits use were identified: technical difficulties; insufficient resources; lack of physical presence and nonverbal information; low technical literacy; differences in families' perceptions of visual cues; privacy and ethics issues; inequitable access and use of virtual visit technology; and lack of advance preparation. Four facilitating factors of virtual visit use were identified: providing multidimensional professional support; strengthening coordination services; understanding the preferences of patients and their families; and enhancing privacy and security protection. In the quality appraisal of 35 studies, 12 studies were rated as low, five as medium and 18 as high methodological quality. This review identified key facilitating factors and barriers to ICU virtual visits, which can foster the development of infrastructure, virtual visiting workflows, guidelines, policies and visiting systems to improve ICU virtual visiting services. Further studies are necessary to identify potential solutions to the identified barriers.

How health seeking behavior develops in patients with type 2 diabetes: a qualitative study based on health belief model in China.

Type 2 diabetes(T2DM) is a global health problem which is accompanied with multi-systemic complications, and associated with long-term health burden and economic burden. Effective health seeking behavior (HSB) refers to reasonably utilize health resources, effectively prevent and treat diseases, and maintain health. Effective health seeking behavior (HSB) is vital to mitigate the risk of T2DM complications. However, health seeking behavior for T2DM patients remains sub-optimal worldwide. The study aimed to explore the internal logic of how health seeking behavior of T2DM patients develops and the influencing factors of health seeking behavior. With a view to provide a reference basis for improving the health seeking behavior situation of T2DM patients. This study was conducted at an integrated tertiary hospital in China. People who were diagnosed with T2DM, capable of expressing clearly and had no mental illness, were approached based on a purposive sampling. The experience of T2DM and health seeking behavior were collected via in-depth interviews. A theory-driven thematic analysis based on Health Belief Model (HBM) was applied for data analysis. Inductive reasoning was used to identify emerging themes which were not included in HBM. 26 patients with T2DM were included in the current study. Seven themes were identified, including: (1) T2DM diagnosis and severity; (2) T2DM treatment and management; (3) Perceived susceptibility of diabetes progression; (4) Perceived severity of diabetes progression; (5) Perceived benefits of health seeking behavior; (6) Perceived barriers of health seeking behavior; (7) Perception of behavioral cues. Generally, patients with T2DM lacked reliable sources of information, considered T2DM to be slow-progressing and without posing an immediate threat to life. Consequently, they did not fully grasp the long-term risks associated with T2DM or the protective effects of health seeking behavior. This study highlighted the challenges in health seeking behavior for patients with T2DM. It suggested that future interventions and strategies should involve multi-faceted approaches, targeting healthcare providers (HCPs), patients with T2DM, and their support networks. This comprehensive strategy can help patients better understand their condition and the importance of effective health seeking behavior. Ultimately, enhancing their capacity for adopting appropriate health-seeking practices.

Audiovisual Speech Perception Benefits are Stable from Preschool through Adolescence.

The ability to leverage visual cues in speech perception- especially in noisy backgrounds- is well established from infancy to adulthood. Yet, the developmental trajectory of audiovisual benefits stays a topic of debate. The inconsistency in findings can be attributed to relatively small sample sizes or tasks that are not appropriate for given age groups. We designed an audiovisual speech perception task that was cognitively and linguistically age-appropriate from preschool to adolescence and recruited a large sample ( N = 161) of children (age 4-15). We found that even the youngest children show reliable speech perception benefits when provided with visual cues and that these benefits are consistent throughout development when auditory and visual signals match. Individual variability is explained by how the child experiences their speech-in-noise performance rather than the quality of the signal itself. This underscores the importance of visual speech for young children who are regularly in noisy environments like classrooms and playgrounds.