The role of speaker familiarity in assessment of dysarthric speech intelligibility

2000 ◽  
Vol 108 (5) ◽  
pp. 2533-2533
Author(s):  
Kuo‐You Huang
Author(s):  
Kaila L. Stipancic ◽  
Kira M. Palmer ◽  
Hannah P. Rowe ◽  
Yana Yunusova ◽  
James D. Berry ◽  
...  

Purpose: The main purpose of this study was to create an empirical classification system for speech severity in patients with dysarthria secondary to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) by exploring the reliability and validity of speech-language pathologists' (SLPs') ratings of dysarthric speech. Method: Ten SLPs listened to speech samples from 52 speakers with ALS and 20 healthy control speakers. SLPs were asked to rate the speech severity of the speakers using five response options: normal, mild, moderate, severe, and profound. Four severity-surrogate measures were also calculated: SLPs transcribed the speech samples for the calculation of speech intelligibility and rated the effort it took to understand the speakers on a visual analog scale. In addition, speaking rate and intelligible speaking rate were calculated for each speaker. Intrarater and interrater reliability were calculated for each measure. We explored the validity of clinician-based severity ratings by comparing them to the severity-surrogate measures. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were conducted to create optimal cutoff points for defining dysarthria severity categories. Results: Intrarater and interrater reliability for the clinician-based severity ratings were excellent and were comparable to reliability for the severity-surrogate measures explored. Clinician severity ratings were strongly associated with all severity-surrogate measures, suggesting strong construct validity. We also provided a range of values for each severity-surrogate measure within each severity category based on the cutoff points obtained from the ROC analyses. Conclusions: Clinician severity ratings of dysarthric speech are reliable and valid. We discuss the underlying challenges that arise when selecting a stratification measure and offer recommendations for a classification scheme when stratifying patients and research participants into speech severity categories.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vibha Viswanathan ◽  
Barbara G. Shinn-Cunningham ◽  
Michael G. Heinz

To understand the mechanisms of speech perception in everyday listening environments, it is important to elucidate the relative contributions of different acoustics cues in transmitting phonetic content. Previous studies suggest that the energy envelopes of speech convey most speech content, while the temporal fine structure (TFS) can aid in segregating target speech from background noise. Despite the vast literature on TFS and speech intelligibility, the role of TFS in conveying additional speech content over what envelopes convey in complex acoustic scenes is poorly understood. The present study addresses this question using online psychophysical experiments to measure consonant identification in multi-talker babble for intelligibility-matched intact and 64-channel envelope-vocoded stimuli. Consonant confusion patterns revealed that listeners had a greater tendency in the vocoded (versus intact) condition to be biased towards reporting that they heard an unvoiced consonant, despite envelope and place cues being largely preserved. This result was replicated when babble instances were varied across independent experiments, suggesting that TFS conveys important voicing cues over what envelopes convey in multi-talker babble, a masker that is ubiquitous in everyday environments. This finding has implications for assistive listening devices that do not currently provide TFS cues, such as cochlear implants.


2021 ◽  
pp. 670-679
Author(s):  
Mohammad Soleymanpour ◽  
Michael T. Johnson ◽  
Jeffrey Berry

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 233121651985459 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Rennies ◽  
Virginia Best ◽  
Elin Roverud ◽  
Gerald Kidd

Speech perception in complex sound fields can greatly benefit from different unmasking cues to segregate the target from interfering voices. This study investigated the role of three unmasking cues (spatial separation, gender differences, and masker time reversal) on speech intelligibility and perceived listening effort in normal-hearing listeners. Speech intelligibility and categorically scaled listening effort were measured for a female target talker masked by two competing talkers with no unmasking cues or one to three unmasking cues. In addition to natural stimuli, all measurements were also conducted with glimpsed speech—which was created by removing the time–frequency tiles of the speech mixture in which the maskers dominated the mixture—to estimate the relative amounts of informational and energetic masking as well as the effort associated with source segregation. The results showed that all unmasking cues as well as glimpsing improved intelligibility and reduced listening effort and that providing more than one cue was beneficial in overcoming informational masking. The reduction in listening effort due to glimpsing corresponded to increases in signal-to-noise ratio of 8 to 18 dB, indicating that a significant amount of listening effort was devoted to segregating the target from the maskers. Furthermore, the benefit in listening effort for all unmasking cues extended well into the range of positive signal-to-noise ratios at which speech intelligibility was at ceiling, suggesting that listening effort is a useful tool for evaluating speech-on-speech masking conditions at typical conversational levels.


2011 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 327-339 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kuldip Paliwal ◽  
Belinda Schwerin ◽  
Kamil Wójcicki

1995 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 22-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sherrill R. Morris ◽  
Kim A. Wilcox ◽  
Tracy L. Schooling

Documenting changes in speech intelligibility across time is an important but difficult task for speech-language pathologists. This study reports on the development and initial testing of the Preschool Speech Intelligibility Measure (PSIM), a single-word, multiple-choice intelligibility measure. The PSIM is adapted from the Assessment of Intelligibility of Dysarthric Speech (Yorkston & Beukelman, 1981) and is designed to plot changes in children's speech intelligibility across time. This instrument is offered as an addition to the existing array of available speech intelligibility measures.


2003 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 198-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine C. Hustad ◽  
Meghan A. Cahill

Clinical measures of speech intelligibility are widely used as one means of characterizing the speech of individuals with dysarthria. Many variables associated with both the speaker and the listener contribute to what is actually measured as intelligibility. The present study explored the effects of presentation modality (audiovisual vs. audio-only information) and the effects of speaker-specific familiarization across 4 trials on the intelligibility of speakers with mild and severe dysarthria associated with cerebral palsy. Results revealed that audiovisual information did not enhance intelligibility relative to audio-only information for 4 of the 5 speakers studied. The one speaker whose intelligibility increased when audiovisual information was presented had the most severe dysarthria and concomitant motor impairments. Results for speaker-specific repeated familiarization were relatively homogeneous across speakers, demonstrating significant intelligibility score improvements across 4 trials and, in particular, a significant improvement in intelligibility between the 1st and 4th trials.


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