Why Early Tactile Speech Aids May Have Failed: No Perceptual Integration of Tactile and Auditory Signals.

ABSTRACT: Tactile speech aids, though extensively studied in the 1980's and 1990's, never became a commercial success. A hypothesis to explain this failure might be that it is difficult to obtain true perceptual integration of a tactile signal with information from auditory speech: exploitation of tactile cues from a tactile aid might require cognitive effort and so prevent speech understanding at the high rates typical of everyday speech. To test this hypothesis, we attempted to create true perceptual integration of tactile with auditory information in what might be considered the simplest situation encountered by a hearing-impaired listener. We created an auditory continuum between the syllables /BA/ and /VA/, and trained participants to associate /BA/ to one tactile stimulus and /VA/ to another t

SUBMITTER: Rizza A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5974558 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature