Current behavioural evidence does not convincingly

The gap

Evidence profile

Sourced from the future-work section and limitations and future work and stated research gap of the source papers, classified as general, drawn from work published between 2024 and 2026, spanning 2 journals. Those papers have been cited 16 times in total.

Supporting evidence — 4 representative gaps

• Effects of linguistic context and noise type on speech comprehension (2024) · Frontiers in Psychology · cited 16× · doi

  Further research is needed to understand how different types of background noise affect our ability to construct meaning from perceptually complex speech input. Research should investigate the interaction between perceptual and linguistic complexity during processing of speech material that is longer and more complex than a single sentence. Studies should examine the effects of noise and context on speech perception in different populations, such as older adults or individuals with hearing impairments.

  generalfuture-work section
  Keywords: further research needed understand different types background noise
• Influence of partial speaker face occlusion during audiovisual speech perception in age-related hearing loss (2026) · doi

  This study has limitations. First, we mostly tested adults with mild-to-moderate age- related hearing loss. Although cross-modal plasticity is apparent in this population through neuroimaging, influences on visual processing during speech perception may not be apparent until later stages of hearing decline. Additionally, we cannot extend claims about visual reliance and attention found in this study to older adults with severe-to-profound hearing loss. Second, we intentionally set auditory speech levels to participants’ individual 50% speech reception thresholds, which attempts to normalize individual differences in audio-only speech-in noise perception and rules out effects of compounding auditory degradation from both hearing loss and background noise in stimulus designs where the speech-to-noise ratio is fixed across participants. However, these conditions (−13 to −4 dB SNR) are uncommonly experienced in day-to-day listening (Wu et al., 2018). In everyday listening, unlike those with typical hearing, OAHL likely experience the accumulated effects of noise and hearing loss, and these conditions may necessitate dependence on visual speech cues.

  generallimitationsevidence 5/5
  Keywords: hearing speech loss noise visual adults apparent perception auditory participants individual effects conditions listening limitations
• Influence of partial speaker face occlusion during audiovisual speech perception in age-related hearing loss (2026) · doi

  The present study tested for a heightened reliance on visual facial cues during audiovisual speech perception in OAHL to examine whether this may be a mechanism for the observed visual bias in OAHL. Results do not support the hypotheses that older adults with more hearing loss experience greater enhancement of speech perception when visual facial cues were present, compared to those with less hearing loss. OAHL also did not differentially 28 direct their gaze to a speaker’s mouth versus eyes during word perception. These findings are inconsistent with current literature suggesting visual behavioural advantages for speech perception in OAHL that may arise through compensatory processes such as cross-modal plasticity. Unlike the congruent audiovisual stimuli used in this study, biases toward vision in OAHL may involve increased cognitive recruitment during the perception of conflicting audio and visual signals. Future research should continue to explore the potential role of cognitive influences during audiovisual perception in OAHL as well as extending findings to those with more severe hearing loss.

  generalfuture workevidence 5/5
  Keywords: visual perception oahl hearing loss https audiovisual speech cross modal investigation writing review aguiar paul
• Evaluating perceptual evidence of cross-modal plasticity in older adults with hearing loss using an audio–visual word mismatch task (2026) · Hearing Research · doi

  Current behavioural evidence does not convincingly demonstrate that cross-modal plasticity confers a visual benefit to older adults with hearing loss. Existing methods do not untangle top-down influences of visual processing from low-level audiovisual integration. The need to understand the source of visual compensatory effects on audiovisual speech perception in older adults with hearing loss.

  generalstated research gapevidence 5/5
  Keywords: current behavioural evidence does convincingly demonstrate cross-modal plasticity

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