Comprehension of Synthetic Speech Produced by Rule: Word Monitoring and Sentence-by-Sentence Listening Times

Ralston, James; Pisoni, David B.; Lively, Scott E.; Greene, Beth G.; Mullennix, John W.

doi:10.1177/001872089103300408

Cited by 51 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…In another comprehension study, we used a self-paced listening task to measure the amount of processing time subjects need to understand individual sentences in a passage of connected speech [RPLGM91]. As expected, we found that listeners 43.…”

Section: Perception Of Synthetic Speech 549supporting

confidence: 63%

Perception of Synthetic Speech

Pisoni¹

1997

Progress in Speech Synthesis

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This chapter sununarizes the results we obtained over the last 15 years at Indiana University on the perception of synthetic speech produced by rule. A wide variety of behavioral studies have been carried out on phoneme intelligibil ity, word recognition, and comprehension to learn more about how human listeners perceive and understand synthetic speech. Some of this research, particularly the earlier studies on segmental intelligibility, was directed toward applied issues deal ing with perceptual evaluation and assessment of different synthesis systems. Other aspects of the research program have been more theoretically motivated and were de signed to learn more about speech perception and spoken language comprehension. Our findings have shown that the perception of synthetic speech depends on several general factors including the acoustic-phonetic properties of the speech signal, the specific cognitive demands of the information-processing task the listener is asked to perform, and the previous background and experience of the listener. Suggestions for future research on improving naturalness, intelligibility, and comprehension are offered in light of several recent findings on the role of stimulus variability and the contribution of indexical factors to speech perception and spoken word recognition. Our perceptual findings have shown the importance of behavioral testing with hu man listeners as an integral component of evaluation and assessment techniques in synthesis research and development. IntroductionMy interest in the perception of synthetic speech dates back to 1979 when the MITalk text-to-speech system was nearing completion (AHK87]. At that time, a number of people, including Dennis Klatt, Sheri Hunnicutt, Rolf Carlson, and Bjorn Granstrom, were working in the Speech Group at MIT on various aspects of this system. Given my earlier research on speech perception, it seemed quite appro priate to carry out a series of perceptual studies with human listeners to assess how . good the MlTalk synthetic speech actually was and what differences, if any, would be found in perception between natural speech and synthetic speech produced by role. Since that time, my research group at Indiana has conducted a large number of experiments to learn more about the perception and comprehension ofsynthetic speech produced by rule. This chapter provides a summary and interpretation of the major findings obtained over the last 15 years and some suggestions for future research directions.

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Section: Perception Of Synthetic Speech 549supporting

confidence: 63%

Perception of Synthetic Speech

Pisoni¹

1997

Progress in Speech Synthesis

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“…Expert speech synthesizer users also have higher transcription accuracy than non-expert users (Stent et al, 2011), though research has also suggested that synthetic speech has lower comprehension rates that is attributable in part to the greater encoding demands of synthetic speech (Ralston et al, 1991). A Chi-square test yielded a significant difference at p < .05 on this measure, as can be seen in Table 1.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The “Voice” Has It: Screen Reader Adoption and Switching Behavior Among Vision Impaired Persons in India

McCarthy

Pal

Cutrell

2013

Assistive Technology

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We present results from a mixed methods study of screen reader use and switching behavior among people with vision impairments in India. We examine loyalty and experimentation with screen readers and find that the main drivers of adoption for early users differ significantly from the factors that drive continued use by advanced users. We discuss the factor that emerges as one of the strongest stated drivers of early adoption, TTS “voice” quality, particularly a “human-sounding voice” as one of the key features differentiating free/open source (FOSS) products from more expensive proprietary products. While the initial preferences are driven by voice quality, application support becomes more important over time as users speed up their sound settings and become more comfortable with the resultant non-human-sounding speech. We discuss these findings from two theoretical perspectives – first, through the application of the economics of behavior switching, and second, vis-à-vis novice and expert approaches toward new product adoption. We argue that these findings further our understanding of initial user comfort related to assistive technology adoption, and the impact of early technology choices on long-term technology switching behavior.

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“…Synthetic speech has also been found to take longer to process than natural speech, even in cases in which comprehension is equivalent (Ralston, Pisoni, Lively, & Greene, 1991). Hence, another factor affecting intelligibility is the rate at which speech is presented (Higginbotham, Drazek, Kowarsky, Scally, & Segal, 1994;Reynolds & Givens, 2001;Slowiaczek & Nusbaum, 1985).…”

Section: Age Differences In Identifying Words In Synthetic Speechmentioning

confidence: 99%