Objective predicates of word intelligibility

Authors

  • C.J. James Dept. of Commun. Disorders, Elborn Coll., Western Ontario Univ., London, Ont., Canada

Keywords:

speech intelligibility, objective predicates, subjective word thresholds, spectral flatness variance, word intelligibility, objective properties, speech level, familiarity, spectral consistency, mono-syllabic words

Abstract

There have been many attempts in the past to systematically attribute the subjective properties of speech to objective and physical characteristics. The aim of this study was to look in more detail at how objective properties interact to contribute to the shape of intelligibility versus presentation level functions for individual words. The interaction of such features as speech level, familiarity and spectral consistency were found to be complex and enlightening. Spectral consistency was measured using the variance of spectral flatness ? and the length of words. These two measures were a novel addition to the standard measures. Although the results shown by no means explain all the variation of speech intelligibility they do provide some insight into the play of factors for the fairly simple case of mono-syllabic words

Additional Files

Published

1994-06-01

How to Cite

1.
James C. Objective predicates of word intelligibility. Canadian Acoustics [Internet]. 1994 Jun. 1 [cited 2026 May 5];22(2):3-17. Available from: https://jcaa.caa-aca.ca/index.php/jcaa/article/view/828

Issue

Vol. 22 No. 2 (1994)

Section

Technical Articles

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