[From intelligibility to comprehension, which measurement in practice?].

Area of Science:

• Speech-Language Pathology
• Audiology
• Linguistics

Background:

• Assessing speech disorders requires reliable measurement tools aligned with the International Classification of Functioning.
• Understanding message perception involves decoding signals and inferring meaning, necessitating diverse assessment methods.

Purpose of the Study:

• To demonstrate the limitations of conventional speech intelligibility tests.
• To evaluate the informative value of consonants in speech disorder assessments.

Main Methods:

• A corpus of 80 syllables with frequent French consonants and vowels was recorded by 10 individuals with head and neck cancer-related speech disorders and 2 controls.
• A jury of 11 listeners identified consonants in an intelligibility test.

Main Results:

• Uvular consonant /r/ and nasals /ŋ/, /m/ were well perceived.
• Consonant confusion analysis revealed overestimation of /v/, /f/ perception and underestimation of /p/ perception.
• Consonants /g/, /k/, /j/ were least perceived, likely due to speech distortion profiles and syllable frequency.

Conclusions:

• The rate of consonant confusion is a critical factor in speech intelligibility testing.
• More relevant methods are needed for analyzing speech intelligibility test results to overcome current limitations.