Two experiments investigated whether and how clear speech production enhances intelligibility of English fricatives for normal-hearing listeners and listeners with simulated hearing impairment. Babble thresholds were measured for minimal pair distinctions. Clear speech benefited both groups overall; however, for impaired listeners, the clear speech effect held only for sibilant pairs. Correlation analyses comparing acoustic and perceptual data indicated that a shift of energy concentration toward higher frequency regions and greater source strength contributed to the clear speech effect for normal-hearing listeners, while listeners with simulated loss seemed to benefit mostly from cues involving lower frequency regions.
Cite as: Maniwa, K., Jongman, A., Wade, T. (2007) Acoustic correlates of intelligibility enhancements in clearly produced fricatives. Proc. Interspeech 2007, 406-409, doi: 10.21437/Interspeech.2007-199
@inproceedings{maniwa07_interspeech,
author={Kazumi Maniwa and Allard Jongman and Travis Wade},
title={{Acoustic correlates of intelligibility enhancements in clearly produced fricatives}},
year=2007,
booktitle={Proc. Interspeech 2007},
pages={406--409},
doi={10.21437/Interspeech.2007-199}
}