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Abstract
Speech perception involves the parallel processing of a wide range of information. Audiovisual speech perception is the best example of this parallel processing with the visual modality providing complementary information to the auditory channel. Under noisy conditions visible speech movements supplement the auditory signal intelligibility is increased Even under very good listening conditions visible speech can influence normal auditory perception. The McGurk effect is an auditory-visual speech illusion in which the perception of a speech sound is modified by contradictory visual information. In this presentation I will present data from speech in noise experiments and studies of the McGurk effect. My goal in this work is to characterize the visual information processing involved in audiovisual speech perception. As part of this research program we have developed facial animation techniques that allows us to control the visual input. A significant weakness in the existing audiovisual speech literature is the failure to control the visual stimulus characteristics. I will summarize our modeling efforts and demonstrate the benefits of this approach.
Biography
Ph.D. in Psychology (McGill University) Post-doc Haskins Laboratories. Currently Associate Professor in Psychology at Queen’s University, cross-appointed to Language and Linguistics Program and the Dept. of Otolaryngology in Medicine. Research interest: speech physiology and motor control, vocal tract modeling, audiovisual speech perception