Use of Crowdsourcing to Assess the Ecological Validity of Perceptual-Training Paradigms in Dysarthria

It has been documented in laboratory settings that familiarizing listeners with dysarthric speech improves intelligibility of that speech. If these findings can be replicated in real-world settings, the ability to improve communicative function by focusing on communication partners has major implications for extending clinical practice in dysarthria rehabilitation. An important step toward development of a listener-targeted treatment approach requires establishment of its ecological validity. To this end, the present study leveraged the mechanism of crowdsourcing to determine whether perceptual-training benefits achieved by listeners in the laboratory could be elicited in an at-home computer-based scenario.

Perceptual-training data (i.e., intelligibility scores from a posttraining transcription task) were collected from listeners in 2 settings-the laboratory and the crowdsourcing website Amazon Mechanical Turk.

Consistent with previous findings, results revealed a main effect of training condition (training vs. control) on intelligibility scores. There was, however, no effect of training setting (Mechanical Turk vs. laboratory). Thus, the perceptual benefit achieved via Mechanical Turk was comparable to that achieved in the laboratory.

This study provides evidence regarding the ecological validity of perceptual-training paradigms designed to improve intelligibility of dysarthric speech, thereby supporting their continued advancement as a listener-targeted treatment option.