Temporal organization of English clear and conversational speech

Abstract

This study investigated the effect of hyperarticulated, intelligibility-enhancing clear speech on temporal characteristics as reflected in number, durations, and variability of consonant and vowel intervals in sentence-and paragraph-length utterances. The results of sentence-in-noise listening tests showed a consistent clear speech intelligibility gain across the utterances of varying complexity indicating that the talkers successfully maintained clear speech articulatory modifications throughout longer stretches of speech. The acoustic analysis revealed that some temporal restructuring accompanied changes in speaking style. This temporal restructuring was observed in the insertion of consonant and vowel segments that were dropped or coarticulated in conversational speech and in an increase in the number of prosodic phrases for clear speech. Importantly, coefficients of variation ͑variation of consonantal and vocalic intervals normalized for changes in speaking rate͒ for both consonantal and vowel intervals remained stable in the two speaking styles. Overall, these results suggest that increased intelligibility of clear speech may be attributed to prosodic structure enhancement ͑increased phrasing and enhanced segmentability͒ and stable global temporal properties.

Speech reductions change the dynamics of competition during spoken word recognition

“…This can be explained by differences between the two speech styles. In laboratory speech, the sentences were clearly and carefully pronounced by one speaker only, whereas in casual speech, the sentences contained more noise and were uttered by multiple speakers (e.g., Smiljanic & Bradlow, 2008a;Bradlow, Nygaard, & Pisoni, 1999). *** Table 2 about here *** Casual speech for the first second after target word onset.…”

Clear Speech Variants: An Acoustic Study in Parkinson's Disease

“…Common instructions for eliciting clear speech include "Speak clearly" (Ferguson, 2004;Ferguson & KewleyPort, 2007), "Hyperarticulate" (Dromey, 2000;Moon & Lindblom, 1994), "Speak to someone with a hearing impairment" (Bradlow et al, 2003), "Speak with nonnative speakers" (Smiljanic & Bradlow, 2008), and "Speak to someone who has difficulty understanding you" (Goberman & Elmer, 2005;Rosen et al, 2011). Other studies have elicited clear speech through an imitation task or training paradigm (Beukelman, Fager, Ullman, Hanson, & Logemann, 2002;Krause & Braida, 2004), by providing a grade or reward system (Perkell, Zandipour, Matthies, & Lane, 2002), or by asking for a repetition (Maniwa et al, 2009;Oviatt, MacEachern, & Levow, 1998).…”

Acoustic correlates of vowel intelligibility in clear and conversational speech for young normal-hearing and elderly hearing-impaired listeners

“…Talkers speaking clearly speak more slowly (Picheny et al, 1986;Bradlow et al, 2003;Smiljanic and Bradlow, 2005;Smiljanic and Bradlow, 2008;Ferguson et al, 2010;Rosen et al, 2011;Lam et al, 2012) and more loudly (Picheny et al, 1986;Ferguson et al, 2010;Hazan and Baker, 2011; 2 Lam et al, 2012) and with a higher voice pitch (Bradlow et al, 2003;Hazan and Baker, 2011). Talkers also use a more variable voice pitch in clear speech than in conversational speech (Picheny et al, 1986;Bradlow et al, 2003;Hazan and Baker, 2011).…”