This study used a multi-talker database containing intelligibility scores for 2000 sentences (20 talkers, 100 sentences), to identify talker-related correlates of speech intelligibility. We first investigated "global" talker characteristics (e.g., gender, F0 and speaking rate). Findings showed female talkers to be more intelligible as a group than male talkers. Additionally, we found a tendency...

OBJECTIVE The development of a test of virtual speech intelligibility in noise that enables assessment in typical, everyday listening situations. To eliminate extraneous confounding factors, digital signal processing was incorporated to simulate listening environments and source locations and allow presentation of stimuli via earphones. DESIGN Source-to-eardrum transfer functions measured on ...

Background: the reduction in speech intelligibility is considered one of the main characteristics of individuals with speech disorders, and is an important issue for clinical and research investigation. In spite of its relevance, the literature does not present a consensus on how to measure speech intelligibility. Besides the diversity of existent methods, another important issue refers to the ...

Many studies have shown the advantage of using ideal binary mask (IdBM) to improve the intelligibility of speech masked by interfering voices. The present work further investigated the segmental contribution to the intelligibility of the IdBMprocessed sentences. Three types (i.e., vowel-only, consonantonly, and vowel-consonant transition) of Mandarin IdBMprocessed stimuli were generated by usin...

This study evaluates the perceptual effects of single-microphone noise reduction in hearing aids. Twenty subjects with moderate sensorineural hearing loss listened to speech in babble noise processed via noise reduction from three different linearly fitted hearing aids. Subjects performed (a) speech-intelligibility tests, (b) listening-effort ratings, and (c) paired-comparison ratings on noise ...

In many cases the intelligibility of speech in noise may be assumed independent of the absolute sound level; the speech-to-noise ratio (SNR) primarily determines intelligibility. However, at high sound levels, speech intelligibility is found to decrease. Subjective Speech Reception Threshold (SRT) measurements were performed at various speech and noise levels, and with various noise spectra. De...

“Clear” (CLR) speech is a speaking style that speakers adopt to be understood correctly in a difficult communication environment. Studies have shown that CLR speech, as opposed to “conversational” (CNV) speech, has significantly higher intelligibility in various conditions. While many differences in acoustic features have been identified, it is not known which individual feature or combinations...

BACKGROUND intelligibility of phonological disorder. AIM to compare the intelligibility of phonological disorder analyzed by three distinct groups of judges. METHOD the research consisted of two samples: one sample was composed by 30 individuals with phonological disorder (assessed individuals) and the other sample was composed by the judges (speech-language therapists, laypeople and mother...

The noise influence to speech signal waveform can be characterized by reduced speech dynamic range (rDR). This motivated the present work to propose an rDR-based intelligibility measure (denoted as rDRm) that could be used to non-intrusively (i.e., do not require clean reference speech signal) predict speech intelligibility in noise and is computed only using the dynamic range extracted from th...

Dysarthria is a motor speech impairment affecting millions of people. Dysarthric speech can he far less intelligible than that of non-dysarthric speakers, causing significant communication difficulties. The goal of this work is to understand the effect that certain modifications have on the intelligibility of dysarthric speech. These modifications are designed to identify aspects of the speech ...