Acceptability ratings and intelligibility scores of alaryngeal speakers by three listener groups

Acceptability and intelligibility of three groups of alaryngeal speakers were examined: four oesophageal speakers, four tracheo-oesophageal puncture speakers using a tracheostoma valve and four tracheo-oesophageal puncture speakers using digital occlusion. Speakers were video-taped producing samples from the Assessment of Intelligibility of Dysarthric Speech, in addition to a section of spontaneous speech. Three groups of listeners were used: nine speech and language therapists, five ENT surgeons and ten naïve listeners. Specific variables including fluency, rate, quality, intensity, extraneous noise, effort required, pitch and general acceptability were rated on a 7-point scale. Overall no significant difference was found between the speaker groups but listener groups did obtain significantly different intelligibility scores with speech and language therapists scoring highest and ENT surgeons lowest. Analysis suggests that speech and language therapist listeners cope equally well with all speaker groups but ENT surgeons and naïve listeners cope best with tracheo-oesophageal puncture speakers using the tracheostoma valve; only the data from ENT surgeons showed a significant difference between scores for the different speaker groups.