# PROJECT 10: DEVELOPMENT OF AUDIOVISUAL SPEECH ENHANCEMENT IN CHILDREN

> **NIH NIH P20** · FATHER FLANAGAN'S BOYS' HOME · 2021 · $172,438

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
PROJECT 10: DEVELOPMENT OF AUDIOVISUAL SPEECH ENHANCEMENT IN CHILDREN
 Children are at a disadvantage relative to adults when listening to speech that is degraded by auditory
background noise. One highly robust cue that adults use to compensate for noisy environments is visual
speech. The increased accuracy and efficiency of speech processing in the presence of visual speech is called
audiovisual (AV) speech enhancement. In adults, these enhancements occur via two neutrally distinct
mechanisms: a perceptual mechanism and a linguistic mechanism. Although a few studies have been
undertaken to quantify AV speech enhancement in children, most researchers have overlooked the plurality of
the mechanisms that underlie such enhancements. The long-term goal of my research program is to provide a
cohesive theoretical account of the development of AV speech enhancement. The objective of the current
proposal is to characterize the development of the perceptual and linguistic mechanisms that underlie AV
speech enhancement. Aim 1 examines development of the perceptual mechanism of AV speech enhancement.
It will evaluate the extent to which adults and 5- to 14-year-old children use visual temporal cues to predict the
timing of onsets and peaks in the amplitude envelope of auditory speech, thereby improving detection and
recognition of auditory speech in noise. It is hypothesized that children as young as 5 years old benefit from
the perceptual mechanism of AV speech enhancement, such as simultaneous onsets, but that it takes longer
to learn to use the ongoing correlations between the auditory and visual amplitude envelopes to precisely track
connected auditory speech. Aim 2 examines development of the linguistic mechanism of AV speech
enhancement. It evaluates the extent to which 5- to 14-year-old children apply visual phonetic knowledge to
constrain phonetic interpretation. This aim will test the hypothesis that, with increasing age, children
demonstrate increasingly detailed visual phonetic knowledge and consequent decreases in visually salient AV
errors. I expect that ability to use visual speech to supplement phonetic interpretation will reach maturity later in
development than the ability to use visual temporal cues to aid perceptual processing. The proposed research
will address a critical gap in our understanding of how children use visual speech to compensate for adverse
auditory conditions in the real world. Clinically, this work has profound implications for age-appropriate
rehabilitation and education practices for children with hearing loss.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10136628
- **Project number:** 5P20GM109023-08
- **Recipient organization:** FATHER FLANAGAN'S BOYS' HOME
- **Principal Investigator:** Kaylah L Lalonde
- **Activity code:** P20 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $172,438
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2014-05-15 → 2024-03-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10136628

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10136628, PROJECT 10: DEVELOPMENT OF AUDIOVISUAL SPEECH ENHANCEMENT IN CHILDREN (5P20GM109023-08). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10136628. Licensed CC0.

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