title: Aphasic subjects' comprehension of synthetic and natural speech.
abstract: This study investigated the ability of aphasic patients with mild auditory comprehension problems to respond to synthetic speech produced by an inexpensive speech synthesizer attached to a personal computer. Subjects were given four practice sessions with synthetic speech; testing of synthetic speech comprehension was performed during Sessions 1 and 4. During testing, aphasic subjects' comprehension of synthetic speech was compared with their comprehension of natural speech on four tasks: (a) picture identification, (b) following commands, (c) yes/no questions, and (d) paragraph comprehension with yes/no questions. Aphasic subjects comprehended natural speech better than synthetic speech in Session 1 but not in Session 4. Their synthetic speech scores improved between Sessions 1 and 4. There was also a significant difference among scores on the four tasks for both sessions. The means for picture identification were highest, followed by yes/no questions, commands, and finally paragraph comprehension for both sessions. Although performance by some subjects on some tasks was accurate enough to indicate that an inexpensive speech synthesizer could be a useful tool for working with mild aphasic patients, considerable caution in selecting both tasks and patients is warranted.
authors: University of Cincinnati, OH.
authors: L M
authors: LM
authors: Huntress
authors: L
authors: L
authors: Lee
authors: N A
authors: NA
authors: Creaghead
authors: D D
authors: DD
authors: Wheeler
authors: K M
authors: KM
authors: Braverman
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001037:Aphasia / Q000523:psychology*; D003143:Communication Devices for People with Disabilities; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D011214:Practice, Psychological; D012656:Self-Help Devices; D013065:Speech Intelligibility; D013067:Speech Perception