Some comparisons of intelligibility of synthetic and natural speech at different speech-to-noise ratios
David B. Pisoni, Esti Koen · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1982
Despite the extensive literature on the intelligibility of natural speech in noise, relatively little is currently known about the deleterious effects of noise on the perception (i.e., recognition, identification, and understanding) of synthetic speech. In this paper, we wish to report the results of a study that examined the effects of noise on the intelligibility of synthetically produced monosyllabic words using the traditional Modified Rhyme Test to measure intelligibility. Over a range of S/N ratios, we found that synthetic speech suffers a greater, decrement in performance than naturally produced speech. Moreover, the decrement in performance was even greater when the MRT response format was changed from a closed six-alternative forced choice procedure to an open free response format. The increase in uncertainty affected recognition of the synthetic items more than the natural ones. These findings have implications for the use of voice response systems that employ synthetic speech in noisy listening environments where intelligibility of the linguistic message may be at a premium. [Supported by a research grant from NINCDS to Indiana University.]