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Main Authors: Papadopoulos, Aristeidis, Harte, Naomi
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.16023
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author Papadopoulos, Aristeidis
Harte, Naomi
author_facet Papadopoulos, Aristeidis
Harte, Naomi
contents Audio-Visual Speech Recognition (AVSR) models have surpassed their audio-only counterparts in terms of performance. However, the interpretability of AVSR systems, particularly the role of the visual modality, remains under-explored. In this paper, we apply several interpretability techniques to examine how visemes are encoded in AV-HuBERT a state-of-the-art AVSR model. First, we use t-distributed Stochastic Neighbour Embedding (t-SNE) to visualize learned features, revealing natural clustering driven by visual cues, which is further refined by the presence of audio. Then, we employ probing to show how audio contributes to refining feature representations, particularly for visemes that are visually ambiguous or under-represented. Our findings shed light on the interplay between modalities in AVSR and could point to new strategies for leveraging visual information to improve AVSR performance.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_16023
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Interpreting the Role of Visemes in Audio-Visual Speech Recognition
Papadopoulos, Aristeidis
Harte, Naomi
Audio and Speech Processing
Audio-Visual Speech Recognition (AVSR) models have surpassed their audio-only counterparts in terms of performance. However, the interpretability of AVSR systems, particularly the role of the visual modality, remains under-explored. In this paper, we apply several interpretability techniques to examine how visemes are encoded in AV-HuBERT a state-of-the-art AVSR model. First, we use t-distributed Stochastic Neighbour Embedding (t-SNE) to visualize learned features, revealing natural clustering driven by visual cues, which is further refined by the presence of audio. Then, we employ probing to show how audio contributes to refining feature representations, particularly for visemes that are visually ambiguous or under-represented. Our findings shed light on the interplay between modalities in AVSR and could point to new strategies for leveraging visual information to improve AVSR performance.
title Interpreting the Role of Visemes in Audio-Visual Speech Recognition
topic Audio and Speech Processing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.16023