Rudner Mary, Mishra Sushmit, Stenfelt Stefan, Lunner Thomas, Rönnberg Jerker
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2016 Jun 1;59(3):590-9. doi: 10.1044/2015_JSLHR-H-15-0014.
Seeing the talker's face improves speech understanding in noise, possibly releasing resources for cognitive processing. We investigated whether it improves free recall of spoken two-digit numbers.
Twenty younger adults with normal hearing and 24 older adults with hearing loss listened to and subsequently recalled lists of 13 two-digit numbers, with alternating male and female talkers. Lists were presented in quiet as well as in stationary and speech-like noise at a signal-to-noise ratio giving approximately 90% intelligibility. Amplification compensated for loss of audibility.
Seeing the talker's face improved free recall performance for the younger but not the older group. Poorer performance in background noise was contingent on individual differences in working memory capacity. The effect of seeing the talker's face did not differ in quiet and noise.
We have argued that the absence of an effect of seeing the talker's face for older adults with hearing loss may be due to modulation of audiovisual integration mechanisms caused by an interaction between task demands and participant characteristics. In particular, we suggest that executive task demands and interindividual executive skills may play a key role in determining the benefit of seeing the talker's face during a speech-based cognitive task.
看着说话者的脸能提高在噪声环境下的言语理解能力，可能会释放用于认知加工的资源。我们研究了这是否能提高对口头说出的两位数的自由回忆能力。
20名听力正常的年轻人和24名听力损失的老年人听并随后回忆13个两位数的列表，说话者为男性和女性交替。列表在安静环境中呈现，以及在固定噪声和类似语音的噪声中以信噪比呈现，该信噪比使可懂度约为90%。放大补偿了听觉损失。
看着说话者的脸提高了年轻组而非老年组的自由回忆表现。在背景噪声中表现较差取决于工作记忆容量的个体差异。看着说话者的脸的效果在安静和噪声环境中没有差异。
我们认为，对于听力损失的老年人，看着说话者的脸没有效果可能是由于任务需求和参与者特征之间的相互作用导致视听整合机制的调节。特别是，我们建议执行任务需求和个体间的执行技能可能在确定基于言语的认知任务中看着说话者的脸的益处方面起关键作用。
