Relation between intelligibility and listening difficulty using word lists based on word familiarity
Masayuki Morimoto, Masaaki Kobayashi, Hiroshi Satō · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2000
Listening tests to assess word intelligibility and listening difficulty were performed to obtain a subjective criterion for speech transmission. It is well known that both intelligibility and listening difficulty depend on the choice of test words. The test words used in the present tests were selected according to word familiarity [Sakamoto et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Jpn. 54, 842–849 (1998)]. The subject was asked to repeat each word and to rate listening difficulty into one of four categories: (0) not difficult, (1) a little difficult, (2) fairly difficult, and (3) extremely difficult. After the tests, the four categories were reclassified into (0) and the others. The listening difficulty is defined as the percentage of the total number of responses except (0). The results demonstrate that: 1) the listening difficulty is highly correlated with intelligibility, 2) the listening difficulty can evaluate the quality of speech transmission more exactly and sensitively than intelligibility, 3) the effects of word familiarity on the listening difficulty and intelligibility do not depend on test sound fields, and 4) STI is not related to either the listening difficulty or intelligibility. Furthermore, the results suggest some other advantages in using listening difficulty as opposed to intelligibility.