Review of 50 years research about speech reading

Watching a speaker's lips is like hearing speech by eye instead of by ear and markedly improves speech perception. In this review I summarise studies over the last sixty years about lip reading, it's issues, methodological problems, experimental and co relational studies, issues of cerebral lateralization, localization and cognitive and neuro psychologic function. Several studies on speech reading in general suggest that hearing impaired groups actually do not possess superior speech reading skills compared to normal controls. With function magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) it was also found that the linguistic visual cues are sufficient to activate auditory cortex in the absence of auditory speech sounds. Here I presented data and arguments about all aspects of the phenomenon of lip reading and it's use in rehabilitation audio logy.