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ERIC Number: EJ909547
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2010-Dec
Pages: 14
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1092-4388
EISSN: N/A
The Effectiveness of Clear Speech as a Masker
Calandruccio, Lauren; Van Engen, Kristin; Dhar, Sumitrajit; Bradlow, Ann R.
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, v53 n6 p1458-1471 Dec 2010
Purpose: It is established that speaking clearly is an effective means of enhancing intelligibility. Because any signal-processing scheme modeled after known acoustic-phonetic features of clear speech will likely affect both target and competing speech, it is important to understand how speech recognition is affected when a competing speech signal is also spoken clearly. In 2 experiments, the authors investigated whether listeners would experience improved intelligibility when both target and nontarget speech were spoken clearly. Method: Listeners' recognition of sentences in competing sounds was examined in 2 experiments. For both experiments, the target speech was spoken in conversational and clear styles. The competing sounds in Experiment 1 included 2-talker maskers spoken in conversational and clear styles of English or Croatian. The competing sounds in Experiment 2 included 1-talker maskers spoken in clear or conversational styles and temporally modulated white noise maskers shaped to mimic the 1-talker maskers. Results: Performance increased for clear versus conversational targets. No significant differences were found between conversational and clear maskers. Conclusions: If it were possible to implement clear speech through a listening device, it appears that listeners would still receive a clear-speech benefit, even if all sounds (including competing sounds) were (inadvertently) processed to be more clear.
American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA). 10801 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD 20852. Tel: 800-638-8255; Fax: 301-571-0457; e-mail: subscribe@asha.org; Web site: http://jslhr.asha.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A