Multisensory input can improve perception of ambiguous unisensory information. For example, speech heard in noise can be more accurately identified when listeners see a speaker's articulating face. Importantly, these multisensory effects can be superadditive to listeners' ability to process unisensory speech, such that audiovisual speech identification is better than the sum of auditory-only and visual-only speech identification. Age-related declines in auditory and visual speech perception have been hypothesized to be concomitant with stronger cross-sensory influences on audiovisual speech identification, but little evidence exists to support this. Currently, studies do not account for the multisensory superadditive benefit of auditory-visual input in their metrics of the auditory or visual influence on audiovisual speech perception. Here we treat multisensory superadditivity as independent from unisensory auditory and visual processing. In the current investigation, older and younger adults identified auditory, visual, and audiovisual speech in noisy listening conditions. Performance across these conditions was used to compute conventional metrics of the auditory and visual influence on audiovisual speech identification and a metric of auditory-visual superadditivity. Consistent with past work, auditory and visual speech identification declined with age, audiovisual speech identification was preserved, and no age-related differences in the auditory or visual influence on audiovisual speech identification were observed. However, we found that auditory-visual superadditivity improved with age. The novel findings suggest that multisensory superadditivity is independent of unisensory processing. As auditory and visual speech identification decline with age, compensatory changes in multisensory superadditivity may preserve audiovisual speech identification in older adults. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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视听语音不仅仅是各部分的总和：听觉-视觉超加和性可以补偿与年龄相关的听觉和唇读语音清晰度的下降。


多感官输入可以改善对模糊单感官信息的感知。例如，当听众看到说话者清晰的面部时，可以更准确地识别在噪音中听到的语音。重要的是，这些多感官效应可以增强听众处理单感官语音的能力，使得视听语音识别优于仅听觉和仅视觉语音识别的总和。据推测，与年龄相关的听觉和视觉言语感知的下降与对视听言语识别的跨感官影响更强有关，但几乎没有证据支持这一点。目前，研究并未在衡量听觉或视觉对视听语音感知的影响的指标中考虑听觉-视觉输入的多感官超加性益处。在这里，我们将多感觉超加性视为独立于单感觉听觉和视觉处理。在当前的调查中，老年人和年轻人在嘈杂的聆听条件下识别听觉、视觉和视听语音。这些条件下的性能用于计算听觉和视觉对视听语音识别影响的传统指标以及听觉-视觉超加性的指标。与过去的工作一致，听觉和视觉语音识别随着年龄的增长而下降，视听语音识别得以保留，并且没有观察到听觉或视觉对视听语音识别影响的年龄相关差异。然而，我们发现听觉-视觉超加性随着年龄的增长而改善。新的发现表明，多感觉超加性独立于单感觉处理。 随着听觉和视觉语音识别能力随着年龄的增长而下降，多感觉超加性的补偿性变化可能会保留老年人的视听语音识别能力。 （PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2021 APA，保留所有权利）。