This paper presents a study where a 3D motion-capture animated ‘virtual speaker’ is compared to a video of a real speaker with regards to how it facilitates children's speech comprehension of narratives in background multitalker babble noise. As secondary measures, children self-assess the listening- and attentional effort demanded by the task, and associates words describing positive or negative social traits to the speaker. The results show that the virtual speaker, despite being associated with more negative social traits, facilitates speech comprehension in babble noise compared to a voice-only presentation but that the effect requires some adaptation. We also found the virtual speaker to be at least as facilitating as the video. We interpret these results to suggest that audiovisual integration supports speech comprehension independently of children's social perception of the speaker, and discuss virtual speakers’ potential in research and pedagogical applications.

本文提出了一项研究，其中将3D动作捕捉动画“虚拟讲话者”与真实讲话者的视频进行了比较，以研究它如何促进儿童在背景多说话者说话时产生的声音中对叙述的语音理解。作为次要措施，孩子们可以自我评估任务所要求的倾听和注意力努力，并将描述正面或负面社会特征的单词与说话者联系起来。结果表明，虚拟说话者尽管具有更多负面的社会特征，但与纯语音演示相比，它在说话时更容易理解胡言乱语，但效果需要一定的适应性。我们还发现虚拟扬声器至少与视频一样方便。