The effectiveness of clear speech as a masker.
OBJECTIVE
It is established that speaking clearly is an effective means of enhancing intelligibility. Because any signal-processing scheme modeled after known acoustic-phonetic features of clear speech will likely affect both target and competing speech, it is important to understand how speech recognition is affected when a competing speech signal is also spoken clearly. In 2 experiments, the authors investigated whether listeners would experience improved intelligibility when both target and nontarget speech were spoken clearly.


METHODS
Listeners' recognition of sentences in competing sounds was examined in 2 experiments. For both experiments, the target speech was spoken in conversational and clear styles. The competing sounds in Experiment 1 included 2-talker maskers spoken in conversational and clear styles of English or Croatian. The competing sounds in Experiment 2 included 1-talker maskers spoken in clear or conversational styles and temporally modulated white noise maskers shaped to mimic the 1-talker maskers.


RESULTS
Performance increased for clear versus conversational targets. No significant differences were found between conversational and clear maskers.


CONCLUSIONS
If it were possible to implement clear speech through a listening device, it appears that listeners would still receive a clear-speech benefit, even if all sounds (including competing sounds) were (inadvertently) processed to be more clear.
Calandruccio
Lauren
L
Department of Linguistics and Communication Disorders, Queens College of the City University of New York, Flushing, NY 11367, USA. lauren.calandruccio@qc.cuny.edu
Van Engen
Kristin
K
Dhar
Sumitrajit
S
Bradlow
Ann R
AR
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009622:Noise; D010470:Perceptual Masking / Q000502:physiology*; D010700:Phonetics; D013060:Speech / Q000502:physiology; D013065:Speech Intelligibility / Q000502:physiology*; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult