Audiovisual Asynchrony Detection and Speech Intelligibility in Noise With Moderate to Severe Sensorineural Hearing Impairment

Abstract

Contrary to either expectation per se, there was no indication of an effect of hearing impairment or age on the sensitivity to intermodal asynchrony in audiovisual speech. It is possible that the negative effects of aging were balanced with the positive effects of increased sensitivity due to reliance on visual cues with hearing impairment. The listeners, normal hearing or hearing impaired, who were more sensitive to asynchrony (with narrower synchrony windows) tended to understand speech in noise better, with both audio-only and audiovisual speech. The practical implication of the results is that delays in audio or video signals of communication systems would affect hearing-impaired listeners in a manner similar to normal-hearing listeners, and due to the importance of visual cues for the hearing-impaired listeners, special attention should be given to limit these delays.

Audio-visual speech experience with age influences perceived audio-visual asynchrony in speech

“…An increased AV synchrony window size connected to hearing loss may have been counterbalanced by a decrease in AV synchrony window size resulting from more experience with AV binding. Although employing different stimulus materials, the results of Hay-McCutcheon et al (2009) are difficult to reconcile with those of Baskent and Bazo (2011) if differences in AV synchrony perception are attributed solely to changes in hearing acuity and cognitive processing speed. Discrepancies in both age and hearing acuity are greater between the age groups in the Baskent and Bazo (2011) study than between the normal-hearing age groups in the Hay-McCutcheon et al (2009) study, yet only the latter reveal age-related differences in asynchrony perception.…”

“…Several reasons for age-related differences in AV asynchrony perception have been suggested: A decline in hearing acuity, a decline in cognitive processing speed, and an increased experience with AV binding (e.g., Baskent and Bazo, 2011;Hay-McCutcheon et al, 2009;Lee and Noppeney, 2011;Powers et al, 2009). Previous investigations of age differences for asynchrony perception of AV speech report somewhat contradicting results (e.g., Baskent and Bazo, 2011;HayMcCutcheon et al, 2009) (VLT), and the full-width at half maximum (FWHM). The MPS denotes the peak of the curve and is the point of subjective simultaneity (PSS).…”

“…The synchrony window is asymmetrical, with audio-lead asynchronies being easier to detect than visual-lead asynchronies (e.g., Conrey and Pisoni, 2006;Hay-McCutcheon et al, 2009). The latter finding is usually attributed to the perceptual system's adaptation to the different transmission speeds of sound (330 ms) and light (300 000 000 ms) (Baskent and Bazo, 2011). The propagation of sound is slower than that of light, whereas the transduction and neural transmission time of auditory input is approximately 40 ms faster than that of visual input (Keetels and Vroomen, 2012;King, 2005).…”

“…It is, however, important to note that comparisons of hearing based on behavioral audiometric thresholds alone fail to account for some hearing anomalies experienced by cochlear implant users, such as limited spectral resolution and sound distortion (e.g., Gfeller et al, 2002;Zhao et al, 1997). Baskent and Bazo (2011) utilized AV sentences to compare asynchrony perception in normal-hearing adults (average 36 yrs) with hearing-impaired elderly (average 71 yrs). They found no correlation between age or hearing impairment and MPS or FWHM.…”

A General Audiovisual Temporal Processing Deficit in Adult Readers With Dyslexia

“…One possibility is that there is a correlation between audiovisual temporal sensitivity and audiovisual perception (Baskent & Bazo, 2011;Stevenson, Zemtsov, & Wallace, 2012). For instance, Stevenson et al (2012) reported that individuals with narrower windows of audiovisual integration were better in dissociating asynchronous audiovisual soundflashes events than individuals with wider windows.…”