TAS

Test of Adult Speechreading

What is it?

This is a test of silent speechreading (lipreading) for adults.

What is involved?

Respondents watch video clips of silent speech produced by a male or female speaker, and select the matching picture from an array. All video clips were recorded using natural speech, but are played without sound.

There are three core TAS subtests which contribute to the ‘overall score’. These measure speechreading at the following levels: words, sentences and short stories. These three subtests together take approximately 30 minutes to complete.

There are two additional subtests available for use which measure speechreading of minimal pairs (e.g., chair/ bear) and sensitivity to sentence stress (which word is stressed in a sentence?).

Who is it suitable for?

  • Deaf adults in the UK
  • Hearing adults in the UK

What normative data is available?

  • Deaf adults aged 21 - 60 years
  • Hearing adults aged 16 - 76 years

Who should use this test?

  • Practitioners e.g. Speech and language therapists, educators, psychologists, audiologists and cochlear implant teams
  • Researchers
  • Speechreading teachers
  • Lecturers for demonstration purposes
  • Deaf Awareness Trainers - may be used to demonstrate the difficulty of speechreading

Test citation

Mohammed, T. E., MacSweeney, M., & Campbell, R. (2003). Developing the TAS: Individual differences in silent speechreading, reading and phonological awareness in deaf and hearing speechreaders. In AVSP 2003-International Conference on Audio-Visual Speech Processing. 

Research using this test

Mohammed, T., Campbell, R., Macsweeney, M., Barry, F., & Coleman, M. (2006). Speechreading and its association with reading among deaf, hearing and dyslexic individuals. Clinical linguistics & phonetics, 20(7-8), 621-630. 



All instructions are given within the test. The participant can choose to access these in BSL or written English.

Format

Data is generated in CSV format for easy import into your preferred data management software.

Task data

A separate CSV file is generated for each participant. Each contains the raw data including the order in which the items were presented, the correct answer for each item, the answer chosen by the participant, the accuracy score (1 or 0) for each item.

Accuracy data

One mark is awarded for each correct answer. The overall maximum score for the core TAS subtests is 45. This consists of a maximum score of 15 for each of the 3 subtests (words, sentences, stories).

Separate scores are also provided for the minimal pairs test (out of 30) and the sentence stress test (out of 10).

Reaction time data

Reaction time data is generated for each core TAS subtest.



For questions related to this test, please contact the task owner, Mairead MacSweeney.