Abstract:

Lipreaders' eye movements were monitored in real time to determine where they direct their attention on the speaker's face to obtain linguistically relevant information for speech perception. Full-motion video sequences displaying a full-face view of a male speaker were presented without sound to proficient lipreaders who were deaf or hearing. A still frame of the speaker's face was displayed for 1 s preceding and following each video segment. The video was followed by a display of a written sentence that was identical or different from the sentence produced by the speaker. Lipreaders indicated same/different by pressing a button. Results indicate that eye gaze was most often directed at the mouth as the speaker produced the sentence but occasionally moved to other parts of the face. The number of these off-mouth gazes during speech varied among lipreaders and with sentence characteristics. Both task and lipreader characteristics influence where people look for information on the face of the speaker. [Work supported by NIDCD, NIH.]