Visual Speech Improves Older and Younger Adults' Response Time and Accuracy for Speech Comprehension in Noise.
Julie Beadle, Jeesun Kim, Chris Davis
PMID 36524310WHAT IT FOUND
Seeing a talker's moving face made speech in noise more accurate and faster to answer than seeing a still face.
The benefit held for younger and older adults and was not reduced by a silent talking distractor.
Key findings
01Seeing a talking face made answers more accurate and faster than seeing a still face.
02The main analyses did not show a significant age-group difference.
03A silent talking distractor did not reduce the benefit of seeing the target talker.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The participants were healthy adults, not patients, and none used hearing aids. The task used simple one-word true-or-false answers, not everyday conversation. Older and younger adults were tested at different noise levels, so their age-group comparison is not direct. The distractor was a silent male talking face in a fixed location, so it may not represent a realistic competing talker. The only age-group difference was found in an exploratory post-hoc analysis of hard questions.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest. The study was funded by the MARCS Institute for Brain Behaviour and Development and the HEARing CRC, with the funder named as the Australian Research Council.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as evidence that seeing a face improves everyday patient communication. The study used a laboratory true-or-false question task in healthy adults, older participants heard speech at -8 dB while younger participants heard it at -10 dB, and the distractor was a silent video rather than a competing talker.