ATLA

Research by UC Riverside psychology Professor Lawrence D. Rosenblum and graduate students Rachel M. Miller and Kauyumari Sanchez has shown that experience seeing a person's face also makes it easier to hear them.

The research asked hearing subjects to lipread a speaker - and then later to listen to a speaker in background noise.

The subjects who listened to the speaker that they had previously lipread understood more than those who listened to a speaker that they had not previously lipread.

These findings suggest that when we watch a person speak, we become familiar with characteristics of their speaking style which also are present in the sound of their speech. This allows talker familiarity to be transferred from lip reading to listening, thereby making a talker easier to hear. These results have implications for individuals with hearing impairments as well as for brain lesion patients, Rosenblum said.

Article "Lip-Read Me Now, Hear Me Better Later: Crossmodal Transfer of Talker Familiarity Effects,"  Psychological Science. The full article can be downloaded from the Association of Psychological Science website.