Influence of language backgrounds on audiovisual speech perception across the lifespan

Abstract

Speech perception is often audiovisual, as demonstrated in the McGurk effect: Auditory and visual speech cues are integrated even when they are incongruent. Although this illusion suggests a universal process of audiovisual integration, the process has been shown to be modulated by language backgrounds. This paper reviews studies investigating inter-language differences in audiovisual speech perception. In these examinations with behavioral and neural data, it is shown that native speakers of English use visual speech cues more than those of Japanese, with different neural underpinnings for the two language groups.