Visual speech modifies the phoneme restoration effect

The current study examined how seeing the talker (having visual speech information) affected phoneme restoration. For this purpose, six phonemes (/b/, /p/, /d/, /t/, /g/, /k/) in word contexts were used as target sounds in a 2IFC task in which participants were required to choose the white noise filled interval in which a target phoneme was present. The results showed that choosing the interval in which the phoneme was present was more difficult (i.e., more errors) in the auditory-visual than in the auditory-only presentation condition. The results were discussed in terms of two potential effects of visual speech, i.e., eliciting an illusion of speech or as a distracter to task performance.