Gaze on lips?
Funders
Project information
Project duration
-
Project funder
Project coordinator
University of Oulu
Unit and faculty
Contact information
Project leader
- Professor
Researchers
Project description
During communication, speechreading (visual speech recognition) and facial expressions are inherently and unconsciously utilized to support auditory speech recognition. Speechreading is necessary especially in adverse listening conditions and for compensating hearing difficulties. For the best speechreading performance, there is, so far, only scarce international research evidence on where one should look at and for how long. However, some previous studies have indicated that speechreading skills can be trained but there is a need to explore the issue more closely.
In Gaze on lips? we shall construct a speechreading test and an application for practising speechreading. Using them, we research how children use their gaze when they speechread silently produced words and sentences and how speechreading skills can be improved. Our results will help to make training of speechreading more effective e.g., in speech and language therapy. A speechreading application will be constructed, and it will be available as a freeware after the project. In addition, the effectiveness of computer vision algorithms on speechreading will be investigated. The aim is to develop further computer vision methods constructed for visual speech recognition.
Research group
The principal investigator of the Gaze on lips? is professor Kerttu Huttunen and the project group includes in part- or full-time positions:
- Adj Prof Satu Saalasti
- PhD Päivi Majaranta
- PhD Elina Niemitalo-Haapola
- PhD Katja Dindar
- PhD Jaakko Kauramäki
- MA, doctoral researcher Minna Mundoli
- MA, doctoral researcher Reetta Viljanen.
In addition, other researchers are Assistant Professor Xiaobai Li (Univ Oulu), Adjunct Professor Kaisa Tiippana (Helsinki Univ), Professor Veikko Surakka (Tampere Univ) and PhD Henri Olkoniemi (Univ Oulu).
