Journal article
Does Sentence-Level Coarticulation Affect Speech Recognition in Noise or a Speech Masker?
Journal of speech, language, and hearing research, Vol.64(4), pp.1-14
03/30/2021
DOI: 10.1044/2021_JSLHR-20-00450
PMCID: PMC8608179
PMID: 33784185
Abstract
Purpose Three experiments were conducted to better understand the role of between-word coarticulation in masked speech recognition. Specifically, we explored whether naturally coarticulated sentences supported better masked speech recognition as compared to sentences derived from individually spoken concatenated words. We hypothesized that sentence recognition thresholds (SRTs) would be similar for coarticulated and concatenated sentences in a noise masker but would be better for coarticulated sentences in a speech masker. Method Sixty young adults participated ( n = 20 per experiment). An adaptive tracking procedure was used to estimate SRTs in the presence of noise or two-talker speech maskers. Targets in Experiments 1 and 2 were matrix-style sentences, while targets in Experiment 3 were semantically meaningful sentences. All experiments included coarticulated and concatenated targets; Experiments 2 and 3 included a third target type, concatenated keyword-intensity–matched (KIM) sentences, in which the words were concatenated but individually scaled to replicate the intensity contours of the coarticulated sentences. Results Regression analyses evaluated the main effects of target type, masker type, and their interaction. Across all three experiments, effects of target type were small (< 2 dB). In Experiment 1, SRTs were slightly poorer for coarticulated than concatenated sentences. In Experiment 2, coarticulation facilitated speech recognition compared to the concatenated KIM condition. When listeners had access to semantic context (Experiment 3), a coarticulation benefit was observed in noise but not in the speech masker. Conclusions Overall, differences between SRTs for sentences with and without between-word coarticulation were small. Beneficial effects of coarticulation were only observed relative to the concatenated KIM targets; for unscaled concatenated targets, it appeared that consistent audibility across the sentence offsets any benefit of coarticulation. Contrary to our hypothesis, effects of coarticulation generally were not more pronounced in speech maskers than in noise maskers.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Does Sentence-Level Coarticulation Affect Speech Recognition in Noise or a Speech Masker?
- Creators
- Brandi Jett - Department of Psychological Sciences, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OHEmily Buss - Department of Otolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery, University of North Carolina at Chapel HillVirginia Best - Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, Boston University, MAJacob Oleson - Department of Biostatistics, University of Iowa, Iowa CityLauren Calandruccio - Department of Psychological Sciences, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Journal of speech, language, and hearing research, Vol.64(4), pp.1-14
- DOI
- 10.1044/2021_JSLHR-20-00450
- PMID
- 33784185
- PMCID
- PMC8608179
- ISSN
- 1092-4388
- eISSN
- 1558-9102
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 03/30/2021
- Academic Unit
- Biostatistics
- Record Identifier
- 9984214675702771
Metrics
11 Record Views