title: Acoustic correlates of vowel intelligibility in clear and conversational speech for young normal-hearing and elderly hearing-impaired listeners.
abstract: The present investigation carried out acoustic analyses of vowels in clear and conversational speech produced by 41 talkers. Mixed-effects models were then deployed to examine relationships among acoustic and perceptual data for these vowels. Acoustic data include vowel duration, steady-state formant frequencies, and two measures of dynamic formant movement. Perceptual data consist of vowel intelligibility in noise for young normal-hearing and elderly hearing-impaired listeners, as reported by Ferguson in 2004 and 2012 [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 116, 2365-2373 (2004); J. Speech Lang. Hear. Res. 55, 779-790 (2012)], respectively. Significant clear speech effects were observed for all acoustic metrics, although not all measures changed for all vowels and considerable talker variability was observed. Mixed-effects analyses revealed that the contribution of duration and steady-state formant information to vowel intelligibility differed for the two listener groups. This outcome is consistent with earlier research suggesting that hearing loss, and possibly aging, alters the way acoustic cues are used for identifying vowels.
authors.affiliation: Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Utah, 390 South 1530 East, Room 1201, Salt Lake City, Utah 84112.
authors.forename: Sarah Hargus
authors.initials: SH
authors.lastname: Ferguson
authors.affiliation: Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS, Utrecht University, Trans 10, 3512 JK Utrecht, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Hugo
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Quené
mesh_terms: D000162:Acoustics; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology*; D001301:Audiometry, Pure-Tone; D001302:Audiometry, Speech; D001309:Auditory Threshold; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006319:Hearing Loss, Sensorineural / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013065:Speech Intelligibility; D013067:Speech Perception; D013068:Speech Production Measurement; D013997:Time Factors; D014833:Voice Quality; D055815:Young Adult