The contribution of fundamental frequency, amplitude envelope, and voicing duration cues to speechreading in normal-hearing subjects

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Abstract
The ability to combine speechreading (i.e., lipreading) with prosodic information extracted from the low-frequency regions of speech was evaluated with 3 normally hearng subjects. The subjects were tested in a connected discourse tracking procedure which measures that rate at which spoken text can be repeated back without any errors. Receptive conditions included speechreading alone (SA), speechreading plus amplitude envelope cues (AM), speechreading plus fundamental frequency cues (FM), and speechreading plus intensity-modulated fundamental frequency cues (AM + FM). In a 2nd experiment, 1 subject was further tested in a speechreading plus voicing duration cue condition (DUR). Speechreading performance was best in the AM + FM condition (83.6 words/min) and worst in the SA condition (41.1 words/min). Tracking levels in the AM, FM, and DUR conditions were 73.7, 73.6, and 65.4 words/min, respectively. The average tracking rate obtained when subjects were allowed to listen to the talker''s normal (unfiltered) speech (NS condition) was 108.3 words/min. Apparently, speechreaders can use information related to the rhythm, stress, and intonation patterns of speech to improve their speechreading performance.

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