Introduction to the Consonant-Recognition Test
John W. Preusse · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1970
A test of speech intelligibility called the Consonant Recognition Test has been developed and evaluated. Designed to use human subjects in conjunction with a digital computer as a precision laboratory tool for diagnostic analysis of speech communication systems, this test appears to combine the attributes of simplicity, efficiency of testing, sensitivity, and diagnostic ability to an extent not previously attained by intelligibility tests. To minimize the effects of speaker differences and to permit one to use conveniently a large number of speakers, nine speakers were rotated or “multiplexed” in the recorded version of the lists so that each list contained a sample of the nine voices. Experiments comparing the consonant recognition test to the Fairbanks rhyme test have demonstrated that the consonant recognition test requires less than 75% of the time for test administration and is about 18% more sensitive, while still providing an extensive diagnostic analysis of the systems under evaluation.