Effect of whole-body vibration on acoustic measures of speech

If Automatic Speech Recognition technology is to be applied in the cockpit, it must deal with speech produced under environmental conditions that may alter the acoustic characteristics of the speech to be recognized. The present study examines the acoustic-phonetic detail of selected words produced under vibration, with the talker wearing an oxygen mask. The duration of words and syllables showed small effects that were inconsistent and statistically non-significant. Statistically significant increases were found in fundamental frequency and in the proportion of energy in the higher frequencies (decreased spectral tilt). The vibration conditions examined had no consistent effect on the center frequencies of the vowel formants measured.