Seeing a Talker’s Mouth Reduces the Effort of Perceiving Speech and Repairing Perceptual Mistakes for Listeners With Cochlear Implants

Integrating visual cues from a talker's mouth not only improves speech intelligibility but also reduces listening effort, particularly for listeners with CIs. For listeners with CIs (but not those with TH), these visual benefits are magnified when a missed word needs to be mentally corrected-a common occurrence during everyday speech perception for individuals with hearing loss. These results underscore the importance of including participants with hearing loss in listening effort studies and suggest caution in assuming results from TH listeners will generalize to those with hearing loss. They also highlight the potential clinical relevance of visual speech information, for counseling patients and families and potentially for the development of audiovisual strategies to reduce listening effort.