US-based Method for Speech Reception Threshold Measurement in French
Alexander Raake, Brian F. G. Katz · 2006
We propose a new method for measuring the threshold of 50% sentence intelligibility in noisy or multi-source speech communication situations (Speech Reception Threshold, SRT).Our SRT-test complements those available e.g. for English, German, Dutch, Swedish and Finnish by a French test method.The approach we take is based on semantically unpredictable sentences (SUS), which can principally be created for various languages.This way, the proposed method enables better cross-language comparisons of intelligibility tests.As a starting point for the French language, a set of 288 sentences (24 lists of 12 sentences each) was created.Each of the 24 lists is optimized for homogeneity in terms of phoneme-distribution as compared to average French, and for word occurrence frequency of the employed monosyllabic keywords as derived from French language databases.Based on the optimized text material, a speech target sentence database has been recorded with a trained speaker.A test calibration was carried out to yield uniform measurement results over the set of target sentences.First intelligibility measurements show good reliability of the method.