Features of listeners affecting the perceptions of Mandarin electrolaryngeal speech

The effect of age and gender of listeners on the perceptions of Mandarin electrolaryngeal speech was investigated. Sixty males and 40 females were categorized into five age groups (20-29, 30-39, 40-49, 50-59, and 60-70 years), who were regarded as naive listeners for having no experience with electrolaryngeal speech. They were instructed to score acceptability of a passage and intelligibility of isolated words and embedded words. The results revealed no gender effects but significant age effects on the perceptual evaluation. It was more difficult for the 50-59 and 60-70 groups to understand electrolaryngeal speech. The results were also analyzed for tonal and segmental errors, and errors of tone alone were found to occur more often than segmental errors. In addition, a preliminary study was presented for the perceptions of the four Mandarin tones. Higher percent correct identification was found for the high-level tone compared to the other three tones.