Intelligibility of speech produced in noise and while wearing an oxygen mask
Z. S. Bond, Thomas I. Moore · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1989
A number of laboratories have described relatively systematic changes in the acoustic-phonetic structure of speech produced in the presence of noise relative to that produced under more benign speaking circumstances. At least some of these changes may be attempts to make speech clearer and more intelligible. In order to evaluate the intelligibility of speech produced in various circumstances, a male talker speaking isolated words in quiet and in the presence of 95 dB SPL of pink noise was recorded. Speech samples were collected both with and without an oxygen mask. The peak amplitudes of each word were normalized, and the words were mixed with pink noise and presented for identification to 45 native and to 10 nonnative English speakers. The order of relative intelligibility was the same for both groups. Speech produced while listening to noise alone was most intelligible. Speech in the laboratory and in mask conditions was considerably less intelligible. The noise + mask condition led to marginally the least intelligible speech. [Work supported by AFSOR.]