The Effect of Cued-Speech (CS) Perception on Auditory Processing in Typically Hearing (TH) Individuals Who Are Either Naïve or Experienced CS Producers

Cued Speech (CS) is a communication system that uses manual gestures to facilitate lipreading. In this study, we investigated how CS information interacts with natural speech using Event-Related Potential (ERP) analyses in French-speaking, typically hearing adults (TH) who were either naïve or experienced CS producers. The audiovisual (AV) presentation of lipreading information elicited an amplitude attenuation of the entire N1 and P2 complex in both groups, accompanied by N1 latency facilitation in the group of CS producers. Adding CS gestures to lipread information increased the magnitude of effects observed at the N1 time window, but did not enhance P2 amplitude attenuation. Interestingly, presenting CS gestures without lipreading information yielded distinct response patterns depending on participants' experience with the system. In the group of CS producers, AV perception of CS gestures facilitated the early stage of speech processing, while in the group of naïve participants, it elicited a latency delay at the P2 time window. These results suggest that, for experienced CS users, the perception of gestures facilitates early stages of speech processing, but when people are not familiar with the system, the perception of gestures impacts the efficiency of phonological decoding.