Using audiovisual speech perception to measure speech production

What is it about?

We have developed a perceiver-based measurement method to answer questions about the psychology of speech production. Specifically, the method harnesses the well-known ability of all language speaker-listeners to combine audio and visual cues in perception in order to measure speaker's anticipatory posturing of their articulators during a spoken language production task.

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Why is it important?

Most direct measurement of speech movement is invasive and so may interfere with the naturalness of speech, especially in more sensitive populations such as children and individuals with autism spectrum disorder. Our non-invasive method that relies on audiovisual speech perception has advantages over other video-based measurement methods because perceivers automatically adjust to changes in perspective in a way that tracking algorithms cannot. This advantage especially recommends the method for work with children, who have difficulty remaining stock still during speech elicitation tasks.