Acoustic landmark analysis of speaker differences in producing clear versus conversational speech.
Sarah M. Hamilton, Sandra Combs, Shruti Balvalli, Joel M. MacAuslan, Jean C. Krause, Suzanne Boyce · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2011
In previous work, we have shown that landmark analysis can be used to detect acoustic changes in clear versus conversational (typical and plain) speech that are associated with changes in intelligibility to listeners. However, these results derive from studies using a small number of speakers [Bradlow and Bent, (2002); Smiljanic and Bradlow (2008)]. The degree to which landmark analysis can be used to predict intelligibility for any particular speaker or sample of speech is not known. In this paper, we present results from a study of listener intelligibility for clear and conversational speech by four speakers with widely differing scores on parameters of acoustic change as determined by landmark analysis. The data consist of intelligibility scores (# content words correct) for a set of BKB sentences produced by these four speakers and presented to four groups of listeners in quiet and in noise. We compare these data with data from studies by Krause & Braida [2002, 2004]. Results will be discussed in terms of the distribution of acoustic changes used by individual speakers to produce clear versus conversational speech, and the relationship of these changes to listener intelligibility.