The Intelligibility of Non-Vocoded and Vocoded Semantically Anomalous Sentences.

Abstract

This document is devoted to and analysis of the intelligibility of semantically anomalous sentences presented in four acoustically different conditions: (1) natural speech, no noise; (2) vocoded speech, no noise; (3) vocoded speech, noise added to the pitch track; (4) vocoded speech, noise to the spectrum. One objective was to analyze the specific types of errors in each conditions. The other objective was to compare results of this analysis with results obtained from the Diagnostic Rhyme Test (DRT). Results revealed that intelligibility was quite good in conditions (1) and (2), relatively poor in (3), and quite poor in (4) -- results consistent with DRT data. Further, about 60% of all errors were phonemic, while 40% were syntactic and semantic. We conclude that information in the spectrum is more critical than information in the pitch track, that most errors affect the phonological component when intelligibility is poor and context is uncertain, and that the DRT is an appropriate though perhaps insufficient test of speech intelligibility. Additional keywords: Speech perception. (Author)

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jul 26, 1985
Accession Number
ADA160401

Entities

People

  • B. Gold
  • M. A. Mack

Organizations

  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Abstracts
  • Acoustic Properties
  • Analyzers
  • Coding
  • Cognition
  • Detectors
  • Error Analysis
  • Errors
  • Human Factors Engineering
  • Intelligibility
  • Language
  • Perception
  • Spectrum Analyzers
  • Speech
  • Statistical Analysis
  • Tape Recorders
  • Tape Recording

Readers

  • Speech Processing/Speech Recognition.