Effects of Training on Listeners in Intelligibility Studies

Abstract

Six hundred English monosyllables formed by successive agglutination of initial consonants were presented in high noise to twelve subjects skilled in listening in noise but uninformed as to the words. Alternate training and testing sessions were conducted at weekly intervals following this initial test and differential responses to the words were plotted. Results indicate that corect response in inversely proportional to the number of speech sounds in the monosyllable, with one exception: the two sound monosyllable is superior to all other lengths when subjects have had even one chance to hear words read aloud. Responses grow progressively better, apparently becoming asymptotic to a ceiling value determined by the S/N ratio, at the same time preserving the same order of difference as established by the naive group. PB lists now in current use in audiology are analyzed according to phonetic length and a method for correcting internal inconsistencies lists is proposed. Amount and kind of listener training is seen as a primary variable in intelligibility testing.

Magnitude-Estimation Scaling of Speech Intelligibility: Effects of Listeners' Experience and Semantic-Syntactic Context

“…Given the findings that listeners' training and practice can significantly improve intelligibility scores (e.g., Eakins, 1969;Egan, 1948;Epstein, Giolas, & Owens, 1968;Farrimond, 1962;Garvey, 1950;Jerger, Carhart, Tilman, & Peterson, 1959;Licklider, Bindra, & Pollack, 1948;Miller & Isard, 1963;Moser & Dreher, 1955;Orr, Friedman, & Williams, 1965;Stuckey, 1963;Tiffany & Bennett, 1961), it might be expected that speech-language pathologists or other individuals who have frequent experiences judging the intelligibility of speech of others will perform differently from individuals who have not had such experiences. Given the findings that listeners' training and practice can significantly improve intelligibility scores (e.g., Eakins, 1969;Egan, 1948;Epstein, Giolas, & Owens, 1968;Farrimond, 1962;Garvey, 1950;Jerger, Carhart, Tilman, & Peterson, 1959;Licklider, Bindra, & Pollack, 1948;Miller & Isard, 1963;Moser & Dreher, 1955;Orr, Friedman, & Williams, 1965;Stuckey, 1963;Tiffany & Bennett, 1961), it might be expected that speech-language pathologists or other individuals who have frequent experiences judging the intelligibility of speech of others will perform differently from individuals who have not had such experiences.…”