Vowels in clear and conversational speech: Talker differences in intelligibility for elderly hearing-impaired listeners
Sarah Hargus Ferguson · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2004
Several studies have shown that when a talker is instructed to speak as though talking to a hearing-impaired person, the resulting clear speech is significantly more intelligible than typical conversational speech. A recent study of 41 talkers [S. H. Ferguson and D. Kewley-Port, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 111, 2482 (2002)] demonstrated that for normal-hearing listeners identifying vowels in noise, the amount of improvement talkers achieve by speaking clearly varies widely. Acoustic analyses of 12 of these talkers suggested that the amount of clear speech vowel intelligibility benefit was related to specific clear speech acoustic strategies adopted by the talkers. However, an earlier paper [S. H. Ferguson and D. Kewley-Port, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 112, 256–271 (2002)] suggested that clear speech acoustic strategies that improve vowel intelligibility for normal-hearing listeners may not be beneficial for the group of listeners for whom clear speech is actually intended: listeners with hearing loss. The current project will explore this issue by assessing vowel intelligibility in clear and conversational speech for older hearing-impaired adults, using materials from the 12 talkers cited above. [Work supported by the University of Kansas Center for Research New Faculty General Research Fund and by NIHDCD-02229.]