This study investigates how children aged two to eight years (N = 129) and adults (N = 29) use auditory and visual speech for word recognition. The goal was to bridge the gap between apparent successes of visual speech processing in young children in visual-looking tasks, with apparent difficulties of speech processing in older children from explicit behavioural measures. Participants were presented with familiar words in audio-visual (AV), audio-only (A-only) or visual-only (V-only) speech modalities, then presented with target and distractor images, and looking to targets was measured. Adults showed high accuracy, with slightly less target-image looking in the V-only modality. Developmentally, looking was above chance for both AV and A-only modalities, but not in the V-only modality until 6 years of age (earlier on /k/-initial words). Flexible use of visual cues for lexical access develops throughout childhood.

本研究调查了 2 至 8 岁的儿童 ( N = 129) 和成人 ( N= 29) 使用听觉和视觉语音进行单词识别。目标是弥合幼儿在视觉任务中视觉语音处理的明显成功与大龄儿童在外显行为测量中的语音处理明显困难之间的差距。参与者在视听 (AV)、纯音频 (A-only) 或纯视觉 (V-only) 语音模式中呈现熟悉的单词，然后呈现目标和干扰图像，并测量对目标的注视。成人表现出很高的准确性，在仅 V 模态中看目标图像略少。从发展的角度来看，对于 AV 和 A-only 模式来说，看是高于机会的，但在 6 岁之前（更早的 /k/-初始词），只有 V 模式才会出现这种情况。灵活使用视觉线索进行词汇访问的能力贯穿整个童年时期。