Twelve normal-hearing subjects rated the intelligibility of 35-s, hearing-aid-processed continuous discourse (CD) passages. Three talkers (two male, one female), four hearing aids, and two signal-to-babble (S/B) ratios were used in a completely crossed design. Research questions concerned: (1) ability of listeners to rate intelligibility, (2) sensitivity of hearing aid rankings were based on in...

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 child...

OBJECTIVE Automatic intelligibility assessment using automatic speech recognition is usually language specific. In this study, a language-independent approach is proposed. It uses models that are trained with Flemish speech, and it is applied to assess chronically hoarse German speakers. The research questions are here: is it possible to construct suitable acoustic features that generalize to o...

The reception of speech transmitted through an acoustic channel such as the ocean is limited by multipath "time-smearing." The purpose of this study was to obtain a quantitative measure of the effects of such timesmearing on speech intelligibility. A linear, time-invariant channel was used as a model of the ocean. The impulse response of this channel was a sample of band-limited Gaussian noise....

A novel means of quantifying the contribution of specific spectral bands for intelligibility is described. The spectrum of spoken English sentences is partitioned into one-third octave bands (“slits”) and the contribution of each of four slits ascertained independently and in combination with other slits distributed across the spectrum. The intelligibility baseline (four concurrent slits) yield...

In a collaborative research project, several monaural and binaural noise reduction algorithms have been comprehensively evaluated. In this article, eight selected noise reduction algorithms were assessed using instrumental measures, with a focus on the instrumental evaluation of speech intelligibility. Four distinct, reverberant scenarios were created to reflect everyday listening situations: a...

The purpose of this study was to identify any differences between speech intelligibility measures obtained with MineEars electronic earmuffs (ProEars, Westcliffe, CO, USA) and the Bilsom model 847 (Sperian Hearing Protection, San Diego, CA, USA), which is a conventional passive-attenuation earmuff. These two devices are closely related, since the MineEars device consisted of a Bilsom 847 earmuf...

In adverse listening conditions, talkers can increase their intelligibility by speaking clearly[45, 55, 42]. While producing clear speech, however, talkers often reduce their speaking rate significantly[46, 55]. A recent study[28] showed that speaking slowly is not responsible for the high intelligibility of clear speech, since talkers can produce clear speech at normal rates with training. Thi...

Introduction The exact number of known living languages varies from 5,000 to 10,000, depending on one's definition of 'language'. An even larger number of dialects are spoken worldwide. Many of these languages and dialects (from now on taken together as 'languages' or 'varieties') are so similar that they are mutually intelligible to varying degrees, even without prior contact or formal instruc...

Aim: The overall aim of this thesis was to investigate different aspects of intelligibility in children and to develop reliable and valid methods for assessment. Method: Initially, four assessment methods were studied: multiple-choice assessment and transcription of single words, transcription of sentences and transcription of spontaneous speech. Audio recordings of 74 ten-year-old children wit...