Synthesized speech intelligibility in sentences: a comparison of monolingual English-speaking and bilingual children.

PURPOSE Research comparing the intelligibility of human and synthesized speech among both young children and adults has indicated that synthesized speech results in a degrading of intelligibility. The purpose of this study was to compare speech intelligibility of high-probability sentences produced using DECtalk Perfect Paul and live speech among monolingual English-speaking and bilingual children. METHOD Twenty typically developing children between the ages of 4;5 (years;months) and 6;2 participated. Ten children (6 boys and 4 girls) were monolingual English speakers. The remaining ten children (4 boys and 6 girls) were bilingual. Their reproduction of modeled sentences produced in English via live speech and synthesized speech were analyzed to determine the intelligibility of each speech type. RESULTS The results indicated that for both groups of children, performance was significantly better in the live speech condition. Results further revealed that the intelligibility decrement for synthesized speech was substantially greater for bilingual speakers. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS For bilingual children, even higher quality synthesized speech may present a greater challenge than it does for monolingual English-speaking children. Possible strategies to enhance intelligibility are discussed.