Some Limits on Encoding Visible Speech and Gestures Using a Dichotic Shadowing Task

Abstract

Visible speech and gestures are two forms of available language information that can be used by listeners to help them understand the speaker's meaning. Previous research has shown that older adults are particularly dependent on visible speech, yet seem to profit less than younger adults from the speaker's gestures. To understand how visible speech and gestures are used when listening becomes difficult, the authors conducted an experiment with a dichotic shadowing task. The experiment examined how accurately participants could shadow the right- or left-ear input when instructed to attend selectively to a particular ear and whether performance benefited from visual input. The results indicate that older adults' shadowing performance was unaffected by visible speech and gestures. Younger adults did benefit by both visible speech and gestures. Thus, under extremely attention-demanding listening conditions, older adults are unable to use a compensatory mechanism for encoding visual language.

Iconic gesture and speech integration in younger and older adults

“…In Thompson (1995), while the older adults relied more on visible speech than younger participants, gesture was shown to help younger adults recall sentences but was of little help to older adults. Thompson and Guzman (1999) also found that while young adults benefited from gesture and visible speech in difficult listening conditions, the older adults did not. They suggested that the difference in the impact of gesture on recall may be related to the cognitive changes associated with aging, particularly due to reduced working memory capacity.…”

“…The only study on gesture imitation also suggests that older adults are less accurate and slower at imitating gesture (Dimeck, Roy, & Hall, 1998). Finally, researchers have found that older adults are worse at naming and categorising pantomime gestures (Ska & Croisile, 1998), at identifying emotional gestures (Montepare, Koff, Zaitchik, & Albert, 1999) and at using gesture as a strategy to support verbal language (Thompson, 1995;Thompson & Guzman, 1999). These studies make an important contribution to our understanding of how aging impacts on gesture comprehension but there are some unanswered questions that remain.…”

“…The research by Thompson and colleagues (Thompson, 1995;Thompson & Guzman, 1999) did investigate gesture that co-occurred with speech. Thompson (1995) investigated the impact of age on the effectiveness of gesture and visible speech ("visible articulatory movements on the face", p. 215) in aiding recall of sentences and in a second study investigated the impact of age on the benefit of gesture and visible speech in difficult listening conditions (Thompson & Guzman, 1999).…”

“…Thompson (1995) investigated the impact of age on the effectiveness of gesture and visible speech ("visible articulatory movements on the face", p. 215) in aiding recall of sentences and in a second study investigated the impact of age on the benefit of gesture and visible speech in difficult listening conditions (Thompson & Guzman, 1999). In Thompson (1995), while the older adults relied more on visible speech than younger participants, gesture was shown to help younger adults recall sentences but was of little help to older adults.…”

“…While the Thompson (1995) and Thompson and Guzman (1999) studies make an important first step in investigating the impact of aging on gesture that co-occurs with speech, the gesture and speech messages in these studies were redundant as the meanings portrayed by both modalities overlapped. This meant that the older adult did not need to attend to gesture in order to complete the task.…”