Predicting Intelligibility Deficit in Dysphonic Speech with Cepstral Peak Prominence

Area of Science:

• Speech-language pathology
• Acoustic analysis of voice disorders
• Auditory perception

Background:

• Dysphonia, a voice disorder, often impacts speech intelligibility.
• Objective acoustic measures are needed to quantify speech deficits.
• Cepstral peak prominence (CPP) is a potential acoustic correlate of voice quality.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the efficacy of cepstral peak prominence (CPP) in predicting intelligibility deficits in dysphonic speech.
• To determine the correlation between CPP measures and intelligibility scores in speakers with and without dysphonia.

Main Methods:

• Recording of Hearing-in-Noise Test sentences from 18 dysphonic and 18 normal-voice speakers.
• Presentation of speech samples to 60 normal-hearing adults in quiet and +0 dB SNR noise conditions.
• Measurement of speech intelligibility via orthographic transcription and acoustic analysis of CPP.

Main Results:

• Dysphonic speech exhibited significantly lower intelligibility than normal speech in noise.
• A moderate correlation was found between CPP and intelligibility scores when averaged per speaker.
• CPP showed a limited ability to predict intelligibility deficits.

Conclusions:

• Cepstral peak prominence (CPP) offers a moderate predictive capability for intelligibility deficits in dysphonic speech.
• CPP alone is not a comprehensive measure for characterizing the full extent of intelligibility impairment in dysphonia.